Interacting with StatusBar

The StatusBar area is a common component to display information messages at the bottom of a frame. In its default form, it is really just a specialized panel that allows us to create separate regions for the displaying of read-only text fields. Normally, this control is a static control that the user cannot interact with; however, with a little customization, it is possible to add controls and other ways for users to interact with the StatusBar area. In this recipe, we will discuss how to add clickable area to StatusBar and use it to show a pop-up menu.

How to do it…

Here are the steps to be performed:

1. First, let's define the constructor to set up our custom StatusBar subclass, as follows:

   import wx
   CSB_MSG = 0
   CSB_ICON = 1
   
   class CustomStatusBar(wx.StatusBar):
       def __init__(self, parent):
           super(CustomStatusBar, self).__init__(parent)
   
           self.err, self.info = self._GetIcons()
           self.img = wx.StaticBitmap(self)
           self.menu = wx.Menu()
    ...