The RibbonBar introduces new resizing space-saving functionality, unseen in older Microsoft Office versions. When the RibbonBar is being resized, and more specifically when it is getting smaller, it automatically collapses the tool chunks to save space. Respectively when it is getting larger, it expands the chunks if space is available.
Here is a sample scenario that you can try in this example:
You have a RibbonBar control that is docked or anchored to a form and you want to make the form smaller. On resize, the first thing you will observe is that the ribbon will start removing the buttons' text labels, if any. If you continue collapsing, large button images will be replaced by smaller images (if the buttons have the SmallImage or SmallImageIndex property set). The last step of the collapsing process is when the ribbon collapses a button group and replaces it with a DropDown button, which opens the button group in a popup window. The expand process is in the opposite order.