Ribbon Explorer 1.1 has just been released
Windows 7 introduces a new Windows Ribbon framework, a framework that enables creating of a modern rich user interface and user experience based on the Office 2007 fluent UI concepts. The Windows Ribbon framework adopted the Model-View-Controller pattern. The UI is written using XAML like language, the controller is a COM based code and the Model is your business logic. To enable developing the Ribbon markup we have created the Ribbon Explorer program. These are the feature of Ribbon Explorer:
Read a Ribbon markup file which its full path is provided in the first argument of the command line. Enable editing of the supply XML file, or a new XML file Show the Ribbon XML, in an editor Open/Save/Close of Ribbon XML file Compile the XML file into a Dynamic Library that contains the Ribbon resources Show the compilation output text in a read only text window (Tab) Show the resulting resource file text in a read only text window (Tab) Show the resulting header file text in a read only text window (Tab) Load the result Dynamic Link Library and show the Ribbon Display a Ribbon for managing the created Ribbon Set the various Application Modes Show the various popup menus and mini-toolbars Show the various contextual tabs Invalidate a property of a Ribbon command Set directly a property of a Ribbon command Change Ribbon Colors Save & Load the Ribbon (QAT/Minimized) state Display the Ribbon callback method calls and the property key/property variant values ( partially implemented )
The new features in this release are:
- Compatible with the Windows 7 RTM
- Invalidating/Setting a state/value/property/all properties of a Ribbon command
- Changing the Ribbon colors
- Save/Load Ribbon state
Playing with the Ribbon color is cool:
The strongest feature is the support of changing control properties of the Ribbon. You do that using the “Invalidate 7 Set” Tab. You can “Invalidate” the control just to see the current state:
Select the Command, then select the Property (In our case the UI_PKEY_LargeImage) and then press the “Invalidate Property”.
The result is:
Now, let’s try to change a value, for example to change the text of a button, tooltip and tooltip description. For that we select the “Set Values On Invalidate”, and set a text value in the “Set String Value”. To leave the control in its Enable state we need also to select the “Set boolean Value” and then press on the “Invalidate All Properties”:
Go and try it here.