The following screenshot shows the appearance of the sample tabbed dialog application.
By clicking on the tabs, the user can display a different set of controls. In the example, the Close and Help buttons remain constant. These two buttons are children of the main dialog box, whereas the other controls are children of panels which are shown and hidden according to which tab is active.
A tabbed dialog may have several layers (rows) of tabs, each being offset vertically and horizontally from the previous. Tabs work in columns, in that when a tab is pressed, it swaps place with the tab on the first row of the same column, in order to give the effect of displaying that tab. All tabs must be of the same width. This is a constraint of the implementation, but it also means that the user will find it easier to find tabs since there are distinct tab columns. On some tabbed dialog implementations, tabs jump around seemingly randomly because tabs have different widths. In this implementation, a tab can always be found on the same column.
Tabs are always drawn along the top of the view area; the implementation does not allow for vertical tabs or any other configuration.