Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Varsha [MSFT] — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 06:10:42 GMT

@Chatchai: Using the WPF Ribbon project template is not mandatory. It was only provided as a quick way to get started using this Ribbon library. You could just as easily integrate a Ribbon control with an existing application by replacing the Menus and ToolBars with a Ribbon control instead. The one other thing that you may want to do is to change the type of the root Window to a RibbonWindow instead so you get the integration with the non-client area just like the office and Windows 7 Ribbons have it.

@Sektor: The event that is fired when you switch tabs is the SelectionChanged event. This is the same event you receive when you change selection within a WPF ListBox or DataGrid control. It is defined on the base class System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.Selector.

@Anand: You should be able to standard XML way of specifying these special characters within XAML. Eg. the following markup snippet works fine.

<Button>This content ends with a greater than character ></Button>

@Ashley:

1. Yes you should be able to use a RibbonQuickAccessToolBar as a standalone control outside the Ribbon. If you want this QAT to show in the non-client region of your dialog, just like it does when hosted as part of the main Ribbon control, then you'd need to host it within a RibbonWindow. RibbonWindow is a subclass of the System.Windows.Window class in WPF allows the app author to author the title bar region in addition to rest of the client region.

2. Thank you for reporting the issue about RibbonWindow.SizeToContent. We are aware of this issue and will look into mitigating it in a future release of this library.

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Ashley.Richter — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:04:49 GMT

1. Is it possible to just have a quick access toolbar without the ribbon? We want a full ribbon for my main window, and then just quick access toolbars on the dialogs.

2. RibbonWindow.SizeToContent does not work correctly when set to SizeToContent.WidthAndHeight. I already opened an issue on connect, but it can't hurt to get it more well known. See here for more details:

connect.microsoft.com/.../ribbonwindow-sizetocontent-does-not-work-correctly

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Anand — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:02:45 GMT

Hi,

How to add >(greater than) character at the end of Xaml content?.

When I am trying to add >(greater than) character at the end of the content, the symbol is displaying as first character.

Example :

MyButtonObj.Content = "Next" + " >"

Output:

> Next

Please assist me to fix this issue...

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Sektor — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:27:33 GMT

I wonder what event is fired when I switch one tab to another? Can't find it!

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Chatchai — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:48:13 GMT

Can you please give me some guideline how can I use this Ribbon in my existing WPF projects. We are looking for the Rinbbon for the existing application and we just reviewed the Ribbon control from Office Fluent UI Licensing which we can add as a control. But for this Ribbon for WPF, it seem we have to create the project from Ribbon project template. How can I use this with my existing WPF project? Please suggested the way to implement.

Thanks

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Varsha [MSFT] — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:43:54 GMT

@Tony: Here's a post (blogs.msdn.com/.../ribbon-browser-application-without-the-title-row.aspx) that demonstrates how to hide the title panel for a Ribbon Browser Application. Hope this helps.

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Tony Henrique — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:11:06 GMT

Good to see that it works on XBAP. I am using XBAP.

Is there an way to remove the toolbar panel? I tried, and even with no QuickToolbar and no title, it still appear the first panel with nothing, from to to down. I think it should have an collapse property.

This is specially useful when using on XBAP; as you can see on your screenshot.

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Varsha [MSFT] — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:52:48 GMT

@Matt: Find my answers below

1) An important thing to note about built-in AddToQAT and RemoveFromQAT functionality is that these are view centric operations. When a user right clicks a control within the Ribbon and adds it to the QAT we clone the element and add the cloned instance to the QAT. Note that this approach was adopted as a common denominator to support MVVM, non-MVVM or semi MVVM apps. Now consider the alternative approach of adding the ViewModel object for a control to the QAT instead. In this case we wouldn’t be able to capture the visualization of the ViewModel object. i.e. We wouldn’t know how it needs to be visualized, as a RibbonButton or RibbonCheckBox or RibbonComboBox. While a pure MVVM app likely supplies DataTemplates for these visualizations of the ViewModel objects, it is not an assumption that we could rely on for the built-in behavior. Hence the current approach. Based on this behavior, one way to do QAT serialization in an MVVM setup is illustrated in the RibbonWindowSample's MVVM part (www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx). To try this switch the StartupUri property in App.xaml to RibbonWindowMVVM.xaml and launch the app. All of the code for it is in UserControlMVVM.xaml.cs. This approach illustrates how QAT contents are serialized to disc in terms of positional information and then conversely deserialized. Also notice that this code is very ViewModel-ish and quite agonistic of View specifics. Lastly you do not need to be locked into this built-in AddToQAT and RemoveFromQAT behavior. These operations are exposed as Commands. You can add CommandBindings for these commands and override the built-in behavior by adding your ViewModel objects directly to the QAT. I’ll make a post illustrating this approach shortly.

2) If the action that you invoke upon clicking the MenuItem takes long then I’d recommend that you perform that operation asynchronously. Use Dispatcher.BeginInvoke API to post a work item request to the Dispatcher, and launch the dialog upon processing that workitem. This way the Menu UI is dismissed immediately.

3) This should be easy to achieve in your app by simply Binding the ToolTipTitle property to Label property of the Control. And you can do this using an implicit Style so it applies to all controls of that type.

@Window XP User: Yes, you are right. We only support the Aero appearance and the Classic appearance. So for all OSes older than Vista, you will see the Classic appearance. You should be able to re skin only the RibbonWidow element and achieve this behavior.

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Matt — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:22:24 GMT

I integrated this into our product, and I have a couple comments. I'm new to WPF (only been developing in it for a month, but I've been reading books on it non-stop!), so some of these items are probably due to my ignorance.

1) QAT serialization doesn't appear to be possible from a MVVM ViewModel, so it's ruining my attempt to have no code in the code-behind. It doesn't bind to an ItemsSource, so I cannot bind it to the VM. It uses the Items collection instead. I tried to use an attached property to get around this limitation but couldn't figure out how.

2) I'm using WPF commanding, and I am launching a form when the use clicks a RibbonMenuItem (which is nested inside a RibbonMenuButton). The form takes 3 seconds to load. During these 3 seconds, the RibbonMenuItem collection stays visible. I'd like to see the RibbonMenuItem collection disappear instantly after the uses clicks one of the RibbonMenuItems.

3) Right now, I'm under a tight timeline and I won't have time to attach tooltips to all the items in the ribbon. When the user right clicks on an item and sends it to the QAT, and then hovers over that icon in the QAT, there is no indication of what the icon does. This is because it only shows the tooltip (and as I said, I have none currently). I'd like it if the QAT showed the Label/Header of the item if there is no tooltip.

As I find more quirks, I'll post them.

re: Introducing Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

Windows XP user — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:14:20 GMT

@VarshaMahadevan: The RibbonWindow is not using visual themes at all. The application window’s title bar looks like from Windows 98… or like from console window.