The
graphical control element palette window,
also known as utility window or floating palette, floats on top of all regular windows and offers ready access tools, commands or information for the current
application.
Applications use palette windows to prevent
toolbar clutter. While toolbars and
ribbons are typically horizontal, locked to window or screen borders, and of fixed length; palettes are usually scaled to fit their contents, movable, and vertical, consuming less of a computer's commonly
landscape oriented screen space, and work better with
multiple monitors.
Some palettes are standard and provided by the OS, reappearing in many applications, while other palettes are unique to each individual application. An example of a common application-specific palette window is an
inspector window. On the
Macintosh
Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
, palette windows are only visible while their parent application has
focus
Focus (: foci or focuses) may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in East Australia Film
*Focus (2001 film), ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based on the Arthur Miller novel
*Focus (2015 ...
. In a
multiple document interface
A multiple-document interface (MDI) is a graphical user interface in which multiple windows reside under a single parent window. Such systems often allow child windows to embed other windows inside them as well, creating complex Hierarchy#Nested hi ...
program, palettes are sometimes independent from the parent window.
References
{{Graphical control elements
Graphical control elements