Panel (computer software)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In graphical computer software a panel is :

• A widget commonly packaged as part of a Widget toolkit for a graphical user interface. See toolbar and dialog box

• A folder in some graphical operating system interfaces that provide tools for configuring the system and the drivers. See control panel.

[edit] Panels in Widget Toolkits

Panels in Widget toolkits often have no specific graphic characteristics, but are mainly used to group children widgets together. They allow to have a better control on the layout of the widgets.

For example, in this XUL definition, two horizontal hbox panels are enclosed in a vertical vbox panel, alongside with two buttons. This allows to be sure that the label and the textboxes for the Login and the Password fields are correctly aligned.

<vbox>
  <hbox>
    <label control="login" value="Login:"/>
    <textbox id="login"/>
  </hbox>
  <hbox>
    <label control="pass" value="Password:"/>
    <textbox id="pass"/>
  </hbox>
  <button id="ok" label="OK"/>
  <button id="cancel" label="Cancel"/>
</vbox>

[edit] See also

• Layout managers, used in Widget toolkits, are software components which have the ability to layout widgets by their relative positions without using distance units.