The Elements of MDI

The main application window of an MDI program is conventional: it has a title bar, a menu, a sizing border, a system menu icon, and minimize/maximize/close buttons. The client area, however, is often called a "workspace" and is not directly used to display program output. This workspace contains zero or more child windows, each of which displays a document. These child windows look much like normal application windows and much like the main application window of an MDI program. They too have a title bar, a sizing border, a system menu icon, minimize/maximize/close buttons, and possibly scroll bars. None of the document windows has a menu, however. The menu on the main application window applies to the document windows.