Ribbon (user interface)

In graphical user interface design, a ribbon is a control element in the form of a set of toolbars placed on several tabs. The typical structure of a ribbon includes large, tabbed toolbars, filled with graphical buttons and other graphical control elements, grouped by functionality. Such ribbons use tabs to expose different sets of controls, eliminating the need for numerous parallel toolbars. Contextual tabs are tabs that appear only when the user needs them. For instance, in a word processor, an image-related tab may appear when the user selects an image in a document, allowing the user to interact with that image.

Use of the term "ribbon" dates back to the 1980s and was originally used as a synonym for plain toolbar. However, in 2007, Microsoft used the term to refer to its own implementation of tabbed toolbars encompassing a conglomerate of controls for Microsoft Office 2007, which Microsoft calls "The Fluent UI". Although Microsoft popularized the term with a new meaning, similar tabbed layouts of controls existed in prior software from other vendors, including 3D Studio Max R3 and later, Adobe Dreamweaver, Borland Delphi, Sausage Software HotDog, and Macromedia HomeSite.

Early use

Use of a ribbon interface dates from the early 1990s in productivity software such as Microsoft Word and WordStar as an alternative term for toolbar: It was defined as a portion of a graphical user interface consisting of a horizontal row of graphical control elements (e.g., including buttons of various sizes and drop-down lists containing icons), typically user-configurable.

A toolbar interface, called the "ribbon", has been a feature of Word from the early MS-DOS-based Word 5.5 (ca.