In Vista you'll also find menu buttons, which look like ordinary buttons except that they have a menu drop-down arrow within them. In some cases, clicking the button reveals a menu (Figure 1.20, top). In others, hovering the mouse pointer "splits" the button into two parts: a larger part that runs the main command and a smaller one (with the dropdown arrow) that shows a small menu of related commands and options (Figure 1.20, middle). Some task-pane buttons and links have menus that are displayed within the pane (Figure 1.20, bottom).

Ribbons
In Microsoft Office 2007, released about the same time as Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced the ribbon to replace the traditional menus and toolbars. A ribbon (Figure 1.21) is organized as a set of tabs that exposes many more commands than the system of menus, toolbars, task panes, and dialog boxes that people worked with in earlier Office versions. The ribbon appears in Word 2007, Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Excel 2007, and Microsoft Access 2007. If it catches on, expect to see the ribbon in other Windows applications.

Figure 1.21 The ribbons in Word 2007 (top) and Excel 2007 (bottom) make it easier to find commands that previously were buried deep in the interface.

Figure 1.20 A menu button in Windows Photo Gallery (top), a split menu button in Windows Media Player (middle), and a task-pane menu in Windows Photo Gallery (bottom).