I am usually very good at predicating how long a feature will take to add, but this time I was out by a factor of 5.
My original estimate was just a couple of days to add keyboard access. This includes the ability to navigate around the tabs, quick access toolbar buttons and groups using the keyboard. It also includes the KeyTips functionality seen in Office 2007. It turned out to be trickier than I anticipated and so ended up at a whopping 10 days.
Here we have the ribbon in its starting appearance.
Using the ALT key or F10 takes you into keyboard mode with the currently selected tab highlighted and the top level KeyTips displayed.
Pressing H takes you into the first tab.
Notice that some KeyTips have two letters. If you press a key that is represented by a single letter KeyTip then it invokes that command. But in this case we press F which is the first letter of several two letter combos. It removes all the KeyTips that do not start with the pressed letter.
I would like to have shown some pics of it working with collapsed groups, where pressing the KeyTip will cause a popup to appear with the group and associated KeyTips. Unfortunately using Paint Shop Pro or SHIFT+PRINT would not display the output and so I could not create the pics.
Finishing the keyboard functionality is another milestone because now the ribbon is feature complete. There are still a couple more tasks to take care of though, design time support and updating the system and professional palettes.
