Jan's Working with Windows:

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Title Bar

The Title bar of an application window shows the title of the current document and the name of the application.

Other kinds of windows may show only the title of the window or only the buttons.

Left end of Title bar:

Right end of Title bar:

On the right end of the Title bar are buttons to minimize the window to the Taskbar, maximize the window to cover the whole Desktop, and to close the window.

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Menu Bar/Ribbon

An application window usually has a cascading menu or a ribbon. Each command opens a cascading menu or a ribbon of commands.

Menu:   

Cascade means that a menu can have other menus in it.

Ribbon:

The example ribbon above is from Paint in Windows 7. It has several types of objects on the ribbon, including two tabs, command buttons, drop lists, and palettes of choices for Colors and Shapes.

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Toolbar/Ribbon

Toolbar: Contains buttons for the most commonly used commands. The icons are supposed to make it easy to guess what the button does. Most applications use similar buttons for the same commands.

The toolbar above has icons for the commands:
New, Open, Save, Print, Preview, Find, Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Insert Date/Time

An application might have several toolbars in view at once. A context-sensitive toolbar will appear only when the commands on it apply to what you are doing. For example, if you select a picture in a Word document, the Picture toolbar appears.

Ribbon: Taller than a toolbar and usually has tabs for grouping commands. A ribbon can have simple buttons like Copy and Cut, buttons that open dialogs like the Edit Colors button, buttons that open a palette of choices like the Brushes button, and galleries of choices right on the ribbon, like the Colors palette.

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Document

The main area of the application window shows the active document. For a word processing program this could be a letter, a brochure, or a report. For a graphics programs it would be a picture. For a browser it would be a web page.

Multiple Documents in One Window

You can have windows inside other windows. Many programs can have several documents open at the same time inside the application's window, like the example below from Paint Shop Pro, which has 4 image windows open in the document area. The first version has the windows in a cascade inside the application window. The second version has the same windows tiled horizontally.

Documents on the Taskbar:

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Status Bar

The bottom of a window contains the Status Bar. It displays messages about the status of the program. For example, it might say "Saving document" during the saving process and then "Done" when it is finished. The example from Win7's Paint shows which brush is selected at the left, the size of the current image in the middle, and has a slider to change the zoom display for the window. What you see in the Status Bar will vary with the type of window.

WordPad (WinXP):

Paint (Win7):

The diagonal lines in the corner of the Status Bar mean that the window can be resized by dragging its edges.

Some dialogs can be enlarged but cannot be made smaller. The corner has only 2 diagonal lines in this case.

Some windows cannot be resized at all. These may not show the status bar. However, some windows don't show the status bar and yet can still be resized. You will just have to try and see if it works!

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Scroll Bars

Windows that are too small to show the whole document will have scroll bars for the width or the height of the document, or both, if necessary. You change what part of the document is showing in the window by dragging the scroll box or by clicking the scroll arrow or by clicking in the scroll bar itself.

The size of the scroll box in many applications is in proportion to how much of the document is showing. So, if half the document is visible, the scroll box will be half of its maximum length in the window.