You use screen elements to create a user interface for your screen.
The following screen elements are available in the Screen Painter (graphical and alphanumeric mode):
Text fields provide labels for other elements and are non-modifiable. They may contain literals, lines, icons, quick info texts, and all alphanumeric characters. They cannot begin with an _ (underscore) or a ? (question mark).
If the text consists of several words, they are joined together automatically by underscores, which are replaced by spaces at runtime.
You use input/output fields (sometimes called templates) for entering and displaying data. To assign a label to such a field, insert a text field next to it and set the attribute As label on left or As label on right for this text field.
The maximum defined length of an input/output field depends on the field type. For character-like types it is 255, for string-like types there is no restriction. The visible length is maximum 255 characters.
Dropdown list boxes are a special type of input/output field containing a list of possible entries. For more information about how to program a dropdown list box, see Dropdown List Boxes .
You use checkbox elements to allow a user to select one or more options in a group. When you select a checkbox and a function code is associated to it, the control is passed back to a work process on the application server immediately. If no function code is associated with it, further selections are possible until you choose a pushbutton or a menu option.
Radio buttons are selection buttons that belong to a logical group. To make their selection mutually exclusive, you must both add the radio buttons to the screen and define them as a radio-button group:
A pushbutton element can be either a text element or an input element. When you choose a pushbutton, you trigger an action and the system sends the associated function code to the underlying ABAP program. At that point, control automatically returns to a work process on the application server that processes the PAI (Process After Input) modules.
Currently there is no link to the interface defined in the Menu Painter. The system does not check whether the selected function codes correspond to a valid status.
Boxes group together a set of elements (for example, a radio button group). They are used only for display purposes. The top edge of a box contains a left-justified header that can be either a text field or an output field.
A tabstrip control resembles a card index file that contains various screens belonging to a single application. Tabstrip controls allow you to insert several components of an application on a single screen and to navigate between them. For more information, see Tabstrip Controls .
Subscreen elements are areas reserved for displaying other screens at runtime. You use subscreens to include other screens in your main program.
A table control is an area on the screen for displaying data in a tabular form. For more information, see Table Controls .
You use custom containers to embed one or more controls within the screen area. The control itself appears on the screen only at runtime. For more information, see Custom Control Attributes .
Status icons are output fields that contain an icon. For more information, see Using Icons .