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Thegraphical control elementpalette window,[1] also known asutility window orfloating palette, floats on top of all regular windows and offers ready access tools, commands or information for the currentapplication.
Applications use palette windows to preventtoolbar clutter. While toolbars andribbons are typically horizontal, locked to window or screen borders, and of fixed length; palettes are usually scaled to fit their contents, movable, and vertical, consuming less of a computer's commonlylandscape oriented screen space, and work better withmultiple monitors.
Some palettes are standard and provided by the OS, reappearing in many applications, while other palettes are unique to each individual application. An example of a common application-specific palette window is aninspector window. On theMacintosh, palette windows are only visible while their parent application hasfocus. In amultiple document interface program, palettes are sometimes independent from the parent window.