For the browse, if the browse or a browse component currently has focus, then setting the attribute to another column causes the proper LEAVE and cell ENTRY events to happen.
If the setting of the CURRENT-COLUMN attribute happens when focus is outside of the browse, then the browse's internal handle to the current column is updated so that it will become the current column when you tab back into the browse. Also if you apply "START-SEARCH" the search mode will now use this column to search on.