Ribbon UI

Ribbon Elements

The following Ribbon UI elements ship with the ExpressBars Suite v6. Note that all components included within the suite support the three paint styles available within Microsoft Office - Blue, Black and Silver.

• Ribbon - our Ribbon implementation meets all requirements set forth by Micrsoft (via its Ribbon UI guidelines);
• Status Bar - Just like Office, our status bar can be divided into two sections each with a different appearance;
• Context Menus;
• Application Menu - ships with an additional right pane that can be used to display recently used documents or other shortcut lists;
• Ribbon Forms - to enable proper form and Ribbon interaction, use our specially designed forms instead of standard classes. When used, the Application Button will be partially painted on the window's caption.

Our Ribbon and Status Bar implementations allow you to display several item types - from simple buttons to embedded editors. For a complete list of available items and embeddable editors, please visit this page.

Layout Adaptation

Our Ribbon implementation doesn't simply mimic appearance, it also provides automatic layout adaptation capabilities. If you narrow a window, the ribbon's content will automatically be compressed by changing large to smaller images, hiding item text, moving buttons into dropdown windows, etc. If you widen the window, the layout will be restored to its initial state.

In-ribbon and Dropdown Galleries

There is a special item type that allows you to create Galleries - an easy and elegant way to organize lengthy option lists. Our gallery implementation currently provides you the following major features:

Gallery items can be split into several groups. In dropdown galleries, groups are visually separated from each other by horizontal bars that display group captions. Our Ribbon control implementation also supports the filter bar that allows you to select which groups are to be displayed.

Application Menu Support

You can create an application menu similar to that found in Microsoft Office applications. For this purpose, bind an ApplicationMenu component to your Ribbon. You can populate it with any bar items - much like you would do with an ordinary popup menu. If sub-menu items are used, the second level menu is automatically sized to fit the application menu. If it doesn't fit, vertical scroll buttons appear automatically.

The Application Menu's right pane is also fully customizable. You can populate it with items displaying text and icons. The Application Menu will automatically assign indexes to these item and will use these indexes as accelerator keys - just like in Microsoft Office.

Key Tip Support

Our Ribbon implementation fully supports Key tips. If an end-user presses the ALT or F10 key, small tooltips showing keyboard shortcuts are displayed over Ribbon items.

Advanced Tooltips

As already mentioned above, advanced tooltips are fully supported. We provide a special component that stores tooltips and provides centralized control over their appearance. Once you have created a tooltip, you can assign it to any bar item or to a Dialog Box Launcher button.

MDI Application Support

MDI layout are automatically supported by our Ribbon implementation. You don't have to do anything except for placing a Ribbon onto the parent MDI form. If you maximize a child window, the Ribbon will display window management buttons allowing you to restore window sizes or close/minimize the current child window.

Intuitive Design-time Customization

When designing a Ribbon, you can access any element's settings by simply clicking the desired element. New elements can be created using context menus. Regardless of your task, you work directly with Ribbon. You don't need to learn how to use complex customization dialog - with ExpressBars you are up and running right away.

End-user Capabilities

The following features are available directly to end-users, without you having to write a single line of code.

• Ribbon Minimization.
  To use form space more effeciently, end-users can temporarily minimize a Ribbon to leave only its page headers visible. For this purpose, they can double-click a page header or select the appropriate context menu item. The same actions can be used to restore the Ribbon state. (Screenshot)
• Quick Access Toolbar.
  End-users can change the Quick Access Toolbar's content and position using built-in context menus - just like in Microsoft Office. (Screenshot)
• Keyboard Navigation.
  End-users can press the ALT or F10 key to move keyboard focus to the Ribbon. Then, they can access any command within any tab using the arrow and TAB keys.
• Mouse Wheel Support.
  When the mouse pointer is over the Ribbon, the active tab can be changed by scrolling the mouse wheel.