RadRibbonTextBox

[Dan]

Are there any plans to offer a RadRibbonTextBox control in the WPF suite?  This control would be similar to the "Search People" input field in the Outlook 2013 Ribbon.  If not, do you see any technical limitations or hurdles we would need to overcome to implement such a control?

Thanks,
Dan East, Bentley Systems, Inc.

[Pavel R. Pavlov]

Hello Dan,

As far as I understand your requirement you need to visualize an editable text field with a search functionality.
In order to achieve your requirement, you can use the RadMaskedTextInput control or the native TextBox and implement your custom searching logic in your application. In order to achieve this you can bind the Text property of the control to property defined in your ViewModel and implement your custom searching logic in the setter of your property.

Basically, if this is a possible solution in your particular scenario, you should be able to successfully implement a searching functionality.

Please note that the searching logic is usually implemented on application level. And the controls used to structure your application only provide the UI needed to implement the searching algorithms.

Thank you for understanding.

Regards,
Pavel R. Pavlov
Telerik

[Dan]

Hi Pavel,

I misled you by referring to the Search field in Outlook and not explaining why.  The Ribbon "standard" and most control suites for the Ribbon do not include a Text input field that can take focus. The Search box in Outlook 2013 was one of the only examples of such a box I could find in Office. There is no RadRibbonTextBox control, so my concern is that there is a technical reason for its absence. Our UI designers are starting to design ribbon layouts with Text input fields, and other more dialog-related controls such as Sliders and SpinBoxes, and I need confirmation from Telerik that this is possible and is something the RadRibbonView will support into future releases.

Thanks.

[Pavel R. Pavlov]

Hi Dan,

Let me explain why we created the RadRibbon controls. The main reason for creating separate buttons for the RadRibbonView is the resizing feature. We needed properties like Size, LargeImage and SmallImage (and others) which are now directly related with the resizing feature. You need to keep in mind that all the controls designed for the RadRibbonView has their IsTabStop property set to False. This is the main difference (in their native properties) between the controls that are not designed for the RadRibbonView.

With the current implementation of the RadRibbonView you are allowed to visualize controls that are not specifically designed for the resizing feature of the ribbon. This means that if you define RadSlired, RadMaskedTextInput and RadMaskedCurrencyInput (in other words - controls not designed to be used in the RadRibbonView) controls in one RadRibbonGroup. That group will go from its Large state directly in its Collapsed state - the resizing will be ignored.

For the moment of writing we do not have any plans to significantly change the current implementation of the RadRibbonView control.

I hope that this information clarifies all of your questions.

Regards,
Pavel R. Pavlov
Telerik