Aero vs Ribbon
エアロ / リボン
Both sit in Microsoft UI, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is style and the other layout. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Aero
The translucent glass UI of Vista and 7: frosted window frames, live thumbnails and GPU-composited depth making 'through glass' the OS's standard vocabulary.
Ribbon
A command bar that organises a program's features into a series of tabs at the top of a window, replacing both the menu bar and the toolbars. Microsoft introduced it with Office 2007 and named its parts in the Windows guidelines: core tabs, groups, contextual tabs, galleries, the Application button and the Quick Access Toolbar. Every command carries a label, and its size follows how often it is used.
| Aero | Ribbon | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2006–2012 | 2007– |
| Family | Microsoft UI | Microsoft UI |
| Kind | Style | Layout |
| Cues | Frosted frames / Reflections and highlights / Live thumbnails / GPU-composited depth | A tabbed band sits permanently at the top of the window, fixed at 48 pixels high / The band is cut into labelled groups, with each group name running along its lower edge / Command icons come in two sizes, 32 by 32 and 16 by 16, and the frequent ones take the large size and lead the group / Coloured contextual tabs appear when an object type is selected, and their tab set labels end in Tools |
| Best used for | Work screens stacking many windows where the layer beneath must stay visible · Control panels for photo or video apps floated above the content itself | Consolidating menus and toolbars into a single surface for a business application with dozens of commands · Designing a surface where users pick by seeing the result first, through galleries and live preview |
| Type | Small light labels on the frame, dark enough to survive translucency | Label every command. Icons stand alone only where the commands are ones everybody already knows. |
| Composition | Glass only on the frame, content areas kept fully opaque | Fix the band to the top and keep core tabs to seven or fewer. Make the first tab Home and gather the frequent commands there, then cut the band into labelled groups. |
| Material | Heavily blurred backdrop, a thin top highlight, a faint tint | Draw each icon at both 32 by 32 and 16 by 16, giving the large size to the frequent commands. Size in ribbon gallery thumbnails to fit inside the 48 pixel band. |
| Caution | Spreading translucency and gloss across the whole screen makes legibility shift with whatever moves behind the text, and hides what is clickable. | Merely refactoring existing menus and toolbars into the band costs the extra space without gaining the results oriented commands that justify it. |