Menu-Toolbar Design-Time Features

On-Form Toolbar/Menu Creation and Customization

Like our Ribbon design-time experience, we’ve made toolbar-menu generation as straightforward as possible. The XtraBars Suite allows you to add and customize your bars directly on the form - without the need for designer dialogs. Once you place a BarManager component onto a form, the main menu, the status bar and a toolbar are automatically created for you. You can then add any number of toolbars by using the BarManager's Smart Tag or context menu.

Toolbar Item Drag and Drop

At design-time, you can use drag and drop for the following:

• Reorder items within toolbars;
• Move items between toolbars;
• Create copies of items via drag and drop while holding the CTRL key down (this can be extremely useful if you need to display the same item within a toolbar and a sub menu);
• Reorder bars, dock them to different container edges and make them float.

Selecting Items and Toolbars by Clicking Them

Bar and item settings can also be accessed without using any designers.

• Click any item to display its settings within the Properties window;
• Click a bar's drag border or anywhere in a bar's empty space to access bar properties.

Context Menu for Items

Right-click any item to invoke its context menu. This menu contains a number of options allowing you to:

• Reset the item's settings;
• Remove the item link from its owning toolbar or sub menu;
• Change the items or caption;
• Specify how the item is represented in toolbars and sub menus;
• Start a new group;
• Specify the item's visibility;
• Specify whether the item should appear as the most recently used.

The Customization Window

You can right-click the BarManager component and choose the context menu's Customize item to invoke the customization window. This window is designed like the customization dialog found in Microsoft Office. It allows you to:

• Create and delete toolbars;
• Reset a particular toolbar's settings;
• Manage dock windows;
• Add and remove items;
• Arrange items into categories (your end-users will see items arranged into categories when invoking the Customization window at runtime).

The Editor Dialog

The BarManager component also provides an Editor dialog that contains a number of pages allowing you to:

• Browse toolbars and their items arranged into a tree;
• Browse categories and their items arranged into a tree (this page provides item drag and drop support for easy category customization);
• Choose the bars' paint style;
• Save and load the bars layout;
• Manage dock windows.

Import Existing MainMenus and ContextMenus

If your project contains standard MainMenus and ContextMenus, you don't have to recreate their structure when starting to use XtraBars. We have implemented a menu import features to drastically simplify conversion from standard menus to XtraBars menus.

• Right-clicking the BarManager component and choosing the context menu's Import From MainMenu item;
• Right-clicking a PopupMenu component and choosing the context menu's Import From ContextMenu item.