Ribbons, Photography

Microsoft has started the process of acquiring a patent on the ribbon user interface concept and licenses the ribbon design to third-party developers royalty-free, as long as the user interface conforms to the Microsoft's design guidelines and they can get an approval from Microsoft. This is despite the Ribbon appearing to be essentially the same as a well established UI control, the tab notebook. The ribbon design guidelines are confidential and an evaluation copy is only available when a non-disclosure agreement has been agreed to. However, until the patent has been filed, one does not have to agree to the license to implement this user interface concept on one's own. Since April 2008, the Ribbon interface is available as a free feature pack to Visual C++ 2008.

 
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