Toolbars

• GNOME Human Interface Guidelines 2.2.1

A toolbar is a strip of controls that allows convenient access to commonly-used functions. Most toolbars only contain graphical buttons, but in more complex applications, other types of controls such as dropdown lists, can also be useful.

Figure 5-1 Example toolbar from a simple mail application

Careful and consistent toolbar design speeds up the user's task by giving direct access to functions that would otherwise be hidden on a menu. Use them only for the most important functions, however. Having too many toolbar controls reduces their efficiency by making them harder to find, and too many rows of toolbars reduces the amount of screen space available to the rest of the application.