A humble label item can now be added to a group. This might not sound very important but could actually rival the ubiquitous button for usefulness.

If you look at the ribbon in detail within application such as Word and Excel you will notice that there are very few instances of a label. That would make you think there is little need for it. But I beg to differ.

Although in theory you’re not supposed to use the ribbon for presenting simple feedback, I can imagine many developers doing exactly that. Imagine your application talks to a couple of servers, it would be very convenient to get feedback quickly by just clicking a ribbon tab. Something like this…

All the information here is presented by using the new GroupLabel item. Really it is just a button item that does not have any user interaction. Unlike the button you can override the text color and also remove the use of an image when in the small or medium sizes.

Sure, you’re not supposed to use the ribbon to provide simple feedback. But if it happens to be the perfect method for doing so, then go ahead and do it.

As a fun marketing experiment I have listed on eBay an auction a developer license of Krypton Navigator. Valued at $149 (US).

Every now and again I have a crazy idea and because I am the boss I can actually try them out. So I wondered if you could actually sell a developer license for the Navigator via an eBay auction. Even more interesting will be the price that it achieves.

The only people that will be interested are those that read this blog and fancy a cheap as chips copy. The starting bid is just $1 and the deadline is 7 days.

If only five people are reading this blog then maybe someone will pick it up for just a fistful of dollars. On the other hand if there are several hundred readers of the blog, and some of those are thinking of buying a copy anyway, then it could go for a few dollars more. Maybe even near the full retail price.

Here is the eBay link.

Let the contest begin.

Last, and certainly not the least, of the buttons types is Split. This is available at the group and cluster buttons.

Here we have a group level button that spans the entire height of the group, with the mouse tracking over the click area.

And now tracking over the drop down area.

When you click the drop down area it shows the associated context menu strip.

The same button in the medium size also honors the split type.

The cluster level button can be configured to be split. Here you have the click portion pressed down.

Finally we have the drop down area of the cluster button pressed.

It seems to have taken forever but we now have the full spectrum of button functionality in place. You can have a push, check , drop down or split type. All the types of button are available as large, medium or small sizes and can also be placed into clusters. Phew.

Now onto the actual auto sizing of the groups to handle the ribbon being resized to different widths. I want to make this process as seamless as possible so that the developer doesn’t have to start specifying complex priorites and other values. It should just work in a reasonable way straight out of the box.

A new container GroupCluster has been added that can contain instances of the new ClusterButton item. This allows the creation of the canonical Bold, Italic, Underline scenario.

It is much easier to show a picture than explain in words.

The four clusters are on the left side of the group separator and are placed inside a GroupLines container that splits the clusters over two lines. On the right side of the group separator is another GroupLines container with two buttons. Both of these are in the default Medium size. When I switch the containers over to the Small alternative we get the following.

Now the items are split over three lines which helps save space for the clusters on the left. For the right hand side it makes little difference because the width is the same.

And for those that prefer the black scheme.

Our second group container is called GroupLines and is used to position the child items into either 2 or 3 lines.

This new container is essential for copying the appearance you see in many of the tabs in Office 2007 applications. Below you can see the container used with a varying number of child button items. The left most group has just one item and each subsequent group to the right has one more child.

The group will automatically work out the best place to split the items onto the second line in order to minimize the total width. So the right most group above has been split after the first button so that the subsequent items are about the same width as the first item.

By default the group will show all items split over 2 lines/rows. For the future it can also split over 3 lines instead. This will be needed when there is not enough room in the tab to show everything and this group is asked to try and cramp up. This mimics the ability also seen in the Office 2007 apps.

Here you can see an example where the five buttons are split over 3 lines instead of the default 2.