The survey results have been added up and the winner is…

Each time someone joins the notification list for updates about Krypton Toolkit they are sent a follow up email with some survey questions. Adding up the results from the last couple of months gives the following chart of requested next component.

So starting Monday I will being work on an Office 2007 Ribbon control. Obviously this is quite a big control to write so I will post regular blog entries about progress as we go along.

You now have a third line setting, Shrinkline.

The BarMultiline property is an enumeration that offers three choices. The default Singleline will position items on a single line but will extend off the display area if there are too many to see at once. Multiline ensures they are all visible by creating as many lines of items as needed. Shrinkline places all items on a single line and will shrink the size of the items to ensure they are all visible.

Here we have several items that easily fit into the available width.

As the space gets smaller the items are shrunk so they are all shown.

Now we have very little space and so the check buttons are very small, but still usable.

Obviously if you keep getting even smaller the check buttons will become zero sized and so not be visible or usable. The ItemMinimumSize is ignored when shrinking the size.

Are there any other algorithms you need whilst I am working in this area?

You can now have multi line bars.

If you define the multiline property it will then extend the bar area downwards so that all the items are visible.

Obviously it respects all the existing bar properties, such as BarOrientation = Left.

It can be applied to all bar modes. Here is the HeaderBar – CheckButton – HeaderGroup mode.

Version 2.3 introduced new label styles and here is why.

Before v2.3 the label styles available were simply Normal and Title. It was assumed that you could safely use either of these on any of the control backgrounds. It did not matter if the background was a panel using PanelClient or a group control using ControlClient as the background style.

However, this did not work for the builtin styles of Office 2007. In the Office 2007 Black color scheme the panel is pitch black and the control client is bright white. Completely opposite and so the only color that could have been used for text on both of these would be something like a gray colour. But this would not have matched the actual colors needed to mimic Office 2007.

So in version 2.3 we introduce two versions of the label styles, one set approriate for a panel background and another set for a control background. These are Normal (Panel), Title (Panel), Normal (Control) and Title (Control). Use the first two when placing your text label onto a panel background and the last two for a control background.

Here you can see an example with the Blue color scheme, where it does not matter if you forget and use the wrong setting.

Under Silver it does not matter if you choose the wrong setting.

But if the user switches to Black, you hosed!

So choose the correct style when creating your labels! And remember to test your application under each builtin palette for best effect.

It seems that this mode needs to be removed for the next release.

I read on a microsoft forum that Office 2007 would default to the Black color scheme under Vista and to Blue for all others. I added the Auto mode in order to set the appropriate color based on the detected operating system, wanting to mimic Office as closely as possible.

But as was pointed out to me as soon as the 2.3 release was made, it is not actually the case and Vista also uses Blue as the default color scheme.

This makes the Auto mode redundant and so I propose to remove it for the next release. Guess I should have checked more carefully assuming a microsoft message was accurate!