After you add an element to your screen, you can convert it to a another kind of element using the Edit menu. You can also use the element palette to select and place screen elements without first identifying fields.

You can use the following screen elements in the Screen Painter (both graphical and alphanumeric):

Text fields provide labels for other elements. Text labels (sometimes called keywords) are display-only elements: neither the user nor the ABAP program can modify them at runtime. Text elements appear in a fixed position on the screen.

Text elements can also include literals, lines, icons, and other static elements. They can include all alphanumeric characters. However, you cannot begin a text with an _ (underscore) or a ? (question mark). If you use a text to label a radio button or checkbox, the text must have the same element name as the element it labels.

If the text consists of several words, join the words together with underscores. The underscores allow the system to recognize the words as a unit. They are replaced by spaces at runtime.

Input/output fields are sometimes called templates. You use them for entering and displaying data. To define the size of an entry element, enter underscore characters in the Text field as follows:

You can also use any other characters to format your template. For numeric values, you can define a comma (,) as the separator and a period (.) as the decimal point. As the last character of the template, you can set a V as place holder for signs.

Input/Output fields have no text labels. To assign a label to one, place a text field next to it.

This is a special type of input/output field. Dropdown list boxes contain a list of entries from which the user can choose one. You cannot type an entry into the text field of a list box.

Use checkbox elements to allow a user to select one or more options in a group. Program control is not immediately passed back to a work process on the application server. Further selections are possible until the user pushes a button or chooses a menu function.

Radio buttons are exclusive selection buttons that belong to a logical group. If a user selects one, the other buttons in the group are automatically deselected. You must both add the buttons and define them as a radio-button group in order to make their selection mutually exclusive.

When a user selects a radio button, control is not passed back to a work process on the application server immediately. As with checkboxes, further selections are possible until the user either presses a pushbutton or selects a menu function.

You use pushbuttons to trigger a particular function. When a user chooses one, 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) module.

Boxes contain sets of elements that belong together - for example, a radio button group. They provide visual emphasis but have no other function.

The top edge of a box normally contains a left-justified header. This header can be either a text field or an output field. If the header is a field element that is empty at runtime, the lines of the box are closed.

The Tabstrip Control Wizard takes you step by step through the procedure for creating a working tabstrip control.

Subscreen elements are rectangular areas of a screen reserved for displaying other screens at runtime. A subscreen area cannot include any other screen elements. You use subscreens to include other screens within your main program.

To use a subscreen, define a second screen that appears in a subscreen area of the first screen.

The Table Control Wizard takes you step by step through the procedure for creating a working table control.

You can use the custom container to embed one or more controls within a screen area. The custom container, like other screen elements, supports resizing and compression. In the Screen Painter, a rectangular area appears as a placeholder for one or more controls. The control itself does not appear on the screen until runtime.

You can define in the element attributes whether you want the control to be resizable.

For further information

Status icons are output fields that contain an icon. The icon is specified at runtime. You use icons to indicate statuses in your application. Icons are predefined in the system and are each two to four characters long.