Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
◾
Text box:
A text box enables you to enter text or a number directly
into it.
◾
Increment buttons:
Text boxes that only accept numeric values
sometimes have increment buttons, which appear as small up and
down arrows. You can click an arrow to increment (increase) or
decrement (decrease) the number shown in the text box as an alter-
native to manually typing a number.
◾
Option buttons:
Option buttons present a group of mutually
exclusive values. When one option button in a group is selected,
the previous selection is cleared.
◾
Command buttons:
Command buttons are large rectangular
buttons with text labels on them. Clicking a command button
performs an action, such as the Print, Cancel, or Apply buttons in
Figure 5.8, or opens another dialog box, as with the Preferences
and Find Printer buttons.
Some menu-based applications contain one or more
toolbars
, which
are groups of graphical buttons that serve as shortcuts for issuing cer-
tain commands. In most cases, you can point at a button on a toolbar
to see a pop-up ScreenTip that tells the button's name or purpose, as in
Figure 5.9.
toolbar
A group of graphical buttons representing
commands.
Figure.5 9
Some menu-based applications contain toolbars.
Ribbon-based applications do not have a menu bar or toolbar.
Instead, they have a tabbed
Ribbon
, which is somewhat like a
large multi-page toolbar. Each tab represents a different page of
tools. Click a tab to access the buttons and other tools on that tab.
Figure 5.10 shows an app called WordPad. It has two ordinary tabs,
Home and View, containing commands you can select. It also con-
tains a File tab, which is the blue tab to the left of the other two. The
File tab opens a File menu, which contains commands for saving,
opening, closing, and printing files. Microsoft Office programs use
this same type of interface, so you will become very familiar with it in
upcoming chapters.
Ribbon
The main toolbar in Office applications
and some other Windows applications, consisting
of multiple tabbed pages of commands.
