Common User Access (CUA) guidelines

This topic briefly describes how ISPF supports the Common User Access (CUA) guidelines. The CUA guidelines define a user interface in terms of common elements, such as the way information appears on a screen, and interaction techniques, such as the way users respond to what appears on a screen. See the SAA CUA Basic Interface Design Guide.

ISPF supports the CUA guidelines in several ways. You can:

Define a list of function keys to be associated with each panel.
Define an action bar and pull-downs on a panel.
Define and display pop-up windows.
Define and display help panels for field-level help, extended help, and keys help. See ISPF help and tutorial panels for more information about CUA help panels.

With ISPF, the panel ID is displayed according to CUA defaults and the PANELID command acts as a toggle.

ISPF also lets you indicate, for an application session, if you want to use CUA defaults. If selected, the Panel display CUA mode option on the ISPF Settings panel controls:

The location of the function keys on the panel in relation to the command and message lines.
The appearance and display format of the keys.