The Actipro Ribbon control suite implements the next-gen Office 2007-like user interface. Features include automated layout resizing, galleries with live preview, QAT customization, color pickers, contextual tab groups, themes, WPF command model integration, key tips, screen tips, VS 2008 designer support and more. Actipro Ribbon is fully compliant with the Microsoft licensing requirements for ribbon user interfaces.

Numerous Built-In Controls
Actipro Ribbon is bundled with numerous advanced controls that can be both inside and outside of the Ribbon. Controls range from simple buttons, checkboxes, and radio buttons, to popup and split buttons. There are galleries, comboboxes (regular, font family, and font size variations), textboxes, several layout controls and more.

In-Ribbon and Popup Galleries
Galleries are controls that are designed to present a choice to the end user visually. Galleries are often used to render things like styles, colors, underlines, etc. that may be applied to a document. Both in-ribbon and popup galleries are included with Ribbon. In-ribbon galleries always show items within a parent Group, and can optionally scale their width to show items based on the available width. Any control that has a popup (such as a popup button, split button, or in-ribbon gallery) can have a popup gallery on it. Popup galleries support categorization, filtering, zoomed-in items on mouse over, and popup resizing. Any gallery item can be rendered via templates or custom drawn via code. Gallery items support selection tracking and live preview as well.

Color Picker Galleries
Color picker galleries are generally used in popups and present a defined list of colors to the end user. The gallery can optionally auto-generate groups of lighter/darker shades for base colors you specify. Multiple categories of colors may be added to a single gallery, and optional filtering can be applied. These galleries have all the features found in popup galleries, such as color item screen tips, selection tracking and live preview.

Advanced Popups Supporting Any Content, Resizing, Multiple Menu Columns, and More
The popups used in Ribbon allow for complete flexibility for your design. You can place any sort of content within a popup, not just menu items. Any sort of complex panel layouts are possible, including popup headers, multiple columns of menu items, etc. A common use of this is to place popup galleries on a popup with menu items above and/or below the gallery. Ribbon also includes a ContextMenu-based control that supports all of these advanced features and may be used anywhere that a regular ContextMenu can be used.

Application Menu / Recent Documents Management
The application menu is where application-level buttons and menu items are generally located. Ribbon supports large menu items, footer buttons (options, exit buttons or any others you define), and addtional content display on the right side of the application menu. Generally recent documents are listed in the additional content area, and Ribbon even comes packed with a control for managing and displaying recent documents, along with pinning capabilities.

Quick Access ToolBar
The Quick Access ToolBar (QAT) may be located above the Ribbon, below the Ribbon or hidden completely. It is always visible no matter which Tab is selected. The QAT has a customize menu that you may add custom items to, and will overflow items to a popup when space is limited. Ribbon has a cloning framework for supporting run-time QAT customizations and persisting changes between application sessions. The complete source code for a fully-functional Customize QAT dialog page is included.

Ribbon Minimization
The Ribbon may be minimized to increase the screen real estate. When in mimized mode, only the Ribbon's Tabs are visible. A Tab may be clicked to display its groups in a popup.

Key Tips and Screen Tips
Ribbon implements key tips provide easy keyboard access to any control on the Ribbon or in its popups. Ribbon also implements screen tips, which are similar to tool tips except that they support some automated layout features, along with contextual help.

Contextual Tab Groups
Contextual tab groups may be displayed when the context of the selection is appropriate for them to be visible. For instance a Picture Tools contextual tab group's Tabs may become active when a picture is selected in a document. Each group may be assigned a separate base tab/background color for visual differentiation.

RibbonWindow (Office-like Window)
The RibbonWindow class mimics the window user interface found in Office, with its rounded corners and custom title bar. When used in Vista with glass enabled, it automatically changes to draw using glass transparency effects behind the QAT and title bar area. RibbonWindow may be used with or without an embedded Ribbon control.

Office Styles for Native WPF Controls
Since Actipro recognizes the need for developers to have a consistent look and feel throughout their application, we have included many Office-like styles for native WPF controls. You can easily apply these themes to scrollbars, statusbars, etc.

Theming
Several built-in themes that mimic Office's blue, black and silver themes are included. However you can also generate a completely custom theme with a single line of code. Individual theme colors may also be altered as needed. For advanced developers who want even more customization possibilities, we've made all our controls so that they can be styled and templated and all primitive elements that are used in our built-in control templates are public.

Right-to-left, Localization, and Scaling
All Ribbon UI supports right-to-left layouts and all text in the user interface may be localized to other languages. The Ribbon and RibbonWindow may be scaled up so that the UI appears larger to the end user while still retaining precise vector-based clarity.

XBAP Support
Ribbon fully supports use in XBAPs (browser applications). We have specifically engineered it to operate within the bounds of the XBAP security sandbox.

Extensive Documentation and Samples
Actipro has spent a lot of time refining the design of Ribbon to take advantage of WPF best practices. We realize that a good product is only part of the equation though and have also worked very hard to write detailed documentation on the product. In addition to that, Ribbon ships with the full source for many QuickStart examples that each focus on learning a specific Ribbon feature.

Part of Actipro WPF Studio
This product can be purchased individually or as part of the Actipro WPF Studio control suite bundle.

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