The ribbon bar was first introduced with the release of Microsoft Office 2007. It resides across the top of a window and is the primary means of accessing application functionality. Unlike the classic menu toolbar approach the ribbon bar offers the ability to display functions and commands in an way that you can locate what you need more quickly. This is in large part due to the context sensitive way that functionality is displayed. The ribbon bar is a great usability improvement to most applications since functionality is not buried beneath a multitude of hierarchical menus and toolbars. Microsoft has even started implementing the ribbon bar in the classic Paint and Calculator applications. Telerik RadRibbonBar offers you the ability to incorporate this same feature in your applications.
Ribbon being used in Microsoft Word 2007.
Telerik RadRibbonBar example
As you can see, all the functionality provided in the ribbon bar can be reproduced inside your WinForm applications with RadRibbonBar. So open a new Windows Form project in Visual Studio and drop the RadRibbonBar onto your form.
You will notice that as usual the title bar is shown and your RadRibbonBar is docked to the top of the window.
Notice that the RadRibbonBar actually has the minimize, maximize and close buttons that are also displayed on the title bar. Note in the picture below how the ribbon bar looks in Microsoft Word with the Start button and Quick Access Toolbar extending into the title bar.
To reproduce this looks takes just one small action.
//original line |
public partial class Form1 : Form |
//change to this line |
public partial class Form1 : RadRibbonForm |
Now your form should look like this.
Go ahead and run the application and you will see that you can use the RadRibbonBar to move the form around, minimize, maximize and close the form. The next step, which will be another post, is adding the different commands to the RadRibbonBar.
Nikolay Diyanov Diyanov is the Product Manager of the Native Mobile UI division at Progress. Delivering outstanding solutions that make developers' lives easier is his passion and the biggest reward in his work. In his spare time, Nikolay enjoys travelling around the world, hiking, sun-bathing and kite-surfing.
Find him on Twitter @n_diyanov or on LinkedIn.