>>>Also, note that if you're using your own status bar (activex I assume), you may want to put it in a bottom-docked toolbar if you haven't already. Otherwise it can become obscured by child forms...
>>
>>How do I position the toolbar? Both the "Docked" and "DockPosition" properties are read-only at design time and run time...
>>
>>Thanks
>
>Uh... nevermind... found the "Dock" method...

Glad to've helped :) the next step (having done this) might be to create a top-level method, which I call Message, with code like:
*****************
lparameters tctext
thisform.otoolstat.sbar.panels(1).text = tctext
*****************
Then to use this you just do

toplevel.message('Hi there!')