Bars Layout Customization and Persistence

We can't help drawing your attention to runtime toolbar customization - the must-have feature of any bars library, which allows end-users to customize the bars layout according to their needs.

Your end-users, if they'd work with the toolbar system in MS Office applications, will get familiar with DXBars in no time. The traditional toolbar system is now the standard of this kind of UI. And the DXBars library ideally follows this standard, offering your end-users powerful and easy-to-use means of runtime customization.

Hot Customization

The fastest way to rearrange bar items. Just, press ALT and drag a bar item to another position. You can copy the item, if you press ALT and CTRL at the same time.

You can even move or copy item to a menu that is currently closed. Closed menus are opened when you hover over them while dragging.

To remove an item from a toolbar, you just need to drop the item outside the toolbar.

Quick Customization Menu

This is the Microsoft Office style customization menu allowing an end-user to change command visibility within a bar or invoke the Customization Window (see below).

The menu can be opened by clicking the dropdown button displayed at the right edge of every bar.

Customization Mode

In this mode advanced customization capabilities are available to end-users. The easiest method is to invoke customization mode is to double-click the empty space within the bar region. Or you can select Customize... from the Quick Customization Menu, described above. In either way, a Customization Window is opened, containing Toolbars, Commands and Options tabs.

Once the Customization Window is opened, an end-user can create, delete, rename and hide bars via the Toolbars tab:

Via the Commands tab, it's possible to access all available commands, even those that were hidden.

You can drag specific items from the Commands tab onto bars:

And, you can do all the things that are available during Hot Customization. But, there is no need to press ALT.

In addition to that, for each bar item, a customization menu is available that allows an end-user to change the item's caption, display style, visibility, etc:

Layout Persistence

It's logical to ask a question: What should I do with the layout of bars after it has been customized by an end-user. The answer is very simple. With DXBars, the layout can be saved to a data store (a stream, file or isolated storage) and then restored later (for instance, when opening the application). So, the changes made by end-users to the layout won't be lost between different runs of your application.