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Motif and CDE 2.1 Style Guide Reference
Palette Area (Area)
Reference
Description
A palette area is an area within a window that provides a place to store
commonly used groups of controls. A palette area may also be called a tool
area if it contains only tools.
Figure 46. Palette Area.
When to Use
- Recommended
- Provide a palette area when the user may want to interact frequently with
specific functional elements of the application. For example, provide a tool
palette area when a user may need to use various tools while interacting with
a graphical control.
- Recommended
- Place palette area choices that are critical to the user's task in a
highly visible location near the viewing area or elements associated with the
task.
- Recommended
- Provide a palette area to hold action choices when the user may issue one
of a small number of commands.
Guidelines
- Required
- Lay out the palette area as a control bar (for example, place it just
below the window's menu bar) if it can apply to all viewing areas in the
window.
- Required
- If a palette area applies to only one viewing area in a window with
multiple viewing areas, place the palette area adjacent to the associated
viewing area.
- Required
- If a palette area is placed adjacent to its associated viewing area, place
it on only one side of the viewing area. Use two sides only when there is a
large number of critical action choices that must be placed in a logical
relationship to an associated fixed element in the view.
- Recommended
- If a palette area is distributed over two sides of its associated viewing
area, use only one side in each dimension.
- Required
- If the user can customize a palette area or remove the action choices in a
palette area, use a menu to provide access to the removable choices.
- Recommended
- If the user can customize a palette area and has removed all controls in
it, remove the palette area.
- Recommended
- Allow the user to customize the palette area by allowing drag and drop.
Essential Related Topics
For more information, see the Control, Pointer, and Value Set reference
pages.
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