Often, a program will call for you to update the contents of status-bar panels dynamically at run time, based on changes to application state or other user interaction. This is a common way to signal users that keys such as the CAPS LOCK, NUM LOCK, or SCROLL LOCK are enabled, or to provide the date or a clock as a convenient reference.

In the example below, you will use an instance of the StatusBarPanel class to host a clock that updates as the time changes.

To ready the status bar for updating

1. Create a new Windows Application.
2. Add a StatusBar control to your form.
3. Add a status-bar panel to your StatusBar control.
4. In the drop-down list at the top of the Properties window, select the StatusBar control you added to your form.
5. Set the ShowPanels property to true.
6. Drag a Windows Forms Timer component from the Windows Form tab of the Toolbox to the form. It will be added to the component tray.
7. In the Properties window, set the following properties:

   Property	Value
   Enabled	true
   Interval	30000

   Note   The Interval property of the Timer component is set to 30 seconds (30,000 milliseconds) to ensure that an accurate time is reflected in the time displayed.

To implement the timer to update the status bar

1. Double-click the Timer component you added to the form.

   The Code Editor opens with the insertion point in the Timer component's Tick event.

2. Insert the following code into the event handler to update the panel of the StatusBar control.

   ' Visual Basic
   Private Sub Timer1_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Timer1.Tick
      StatusBar1.Panels(0).Text = Now.ToShortTimeString
   End Sub
   
   // C#
   private void timer1_Tick(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
   {
      statusBar1.Panels[0].Text = DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString();
   }
   
   // C++
   private:
     System::Void timer1_Tick(System::Object *  sender,
       System::EventArgs *  e)
     {
       statusBar1->Panels->Item[0]->Text =
         DateTime::Now.ToShortTimeString();
     }

To test the application

At this point, you will run the application and observe the clock running in the status-bar panel.

• Debug the application and press F5 to run it.

  Note   It will take approximately 30 seconds for the clock to appear in the status bar. This is to get the most accurate time possible. Conversely, to make the clock appear sooner, you could reduce the value of the Interval property you set in step 7 above.

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