Toolbar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Wikipedia toolbars, see Wikipedia:Toolbars. For the Wikipedia Toolbar, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Toolbar.

In a graphical user interface on a computer monitor a toolbar is a panel on which onscreen buttons, icons, menus or other input or output elements are placed.

Earlier forms of toolbars were defined by the programmer and had set functions, and thus there was no difference between a toolbar with buttons or just a row of buttons. Most modern programs and operating systems however, allow the end user to modify and customize toolbars to fit their personal needs. Some prominent examples of customizable toolbars are panels of the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, functions of which range from expandable menus and buttons for applications, window lists, notification areas, clocks and resource monitors to volume controls and weather report widgets.

Detachable toolbars of Inkscape. Shown inside is Inkscape with undetached toolbars.

Some applications, e.g. graphics editors, allow their toolbars to be detached and moved between windows and other toolbars.

The first toolbar appeared on the Xerox Alto computer in 1973^{[citation needed]}.

Toolbars are seen in office suites such as OpenOffice.org, graphics editors such as Inkscape and web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox.

[edit] Web browser toolbar add-ons

Third-party toolbars for browsers are best known for adding functionality and ease-of-use options to the end user. While the browser itself handles basic browsing navigation (Back, Stop, Reload, etc) using its own toolbars, external toolbars often add additional functionality to browsers (additional search fields, form-fill, links back to popular sites, etc)