Can you work out the following formula?

Yep that’s right. I fell off a kid’s scooter whilst going downhill and managed to break my hand. But not your average simple break mind you, oh no, instead the right scaphoid is broken into three pieces and requires a quick operation to pin it all back together. And the reaction I get from family and friends?

To be fair this is about the reaction I deserve for trying to race a 9 year old nephew down the street. Still, the end result is 8 weeks of trying to work on a keyboard/mouse left handed when I’m right handed. So forgive the terse responses to forum/email messages. Remember, those two sentence replies actually took me 15 minutes!

Krypton 2.8.0 Released

Your favorite WinForms toolkit is now better than ever before! The free toolkit has grown to include 21 controls, 5 components and 1 form. And that does not include the 9 different elements that can be added inside the context menu component. Here is a summary of the new features…

New Controls/Components
    KryptonDropButton
    KryptonColorButton
    KryptonListBox
    KryptonCheckedListBox
    KryptonCommand
    KryptonGallery
    6 x KryptonContextMenu Elements

Download 2.8.0 Now!

Note that the KryptonGallery is a standalone version of the gallery element that has been added to the KryptonRibbon. Also note that you need a ribbon serial key to use the gallery control, it is not part of the free toolkit.

I recommend you check out the KryptonContextMenu, KryptonCommand and KryptonCheckedListBox examples to see some of the enhancements in action. If your using the Ribbon then check the out the gallery examples to see them in full glory.

P.S. Please read the change list documents contained in the Resources section of the Krypton Explorer. There is a small breaking change for some uses of the KryptonComboBox as well as a line of code the needs removing from all generated code use of the KryptonComboBox.

Krypton Toolkit Beta

This is a beta release of the Toolki/Ribbon/Navigator in anticipation of the full 2.8.0 release in the very near future. The actual version number is 2.7.9 and it will work with your existing 2.7 serial keys. A summary of just some of the new controls/components includes…

KryptonDropButton
KryptonColorButton
KryptonListBox
KryptonCheckedListBox
KryptonCommand
KryptonGallery

Plus much more including many new elements for use in the KryptonContextMenu as well as new group elements for the KryptonRibbon. As ever, read the change list documents for a full list of all changes.

Download Now!

Please post any bug reports for this beta on the special forum I have created. Enjoy!

When you create a KryptonForm based application you get a custom chrome look for your form, because the default palette is Office 2007 Blue and that palette requests a blue themed border and caption area. You get the same custom chrome under Windows XP and Vista.

But something changes once you add the KryptonRibbon. Under XP you get the application button and quick access toolbar integrated into the caption bar area of the window. Likewise under Vista, except the border loses the blue theme and becomes glassy just like other Vista applications.

This change in border appearance under Vista is to the default when you have a ribbon because it is trying to mimic the operation of the Office 2007 applications.  Try running Word 2007 under XP and Vista and you will see the same thing, blue custom chrome under XP but glassy custom chrome under Vista. So krypton is defaulting to doing the same. Here you can see a krypton ribbon app under Vista… 

But some developers have noted that they do not want to follow the Office 2007 applications and instead would prefer to keep the blue custom border at all times. No problem, now you just set the AllowFormIntegration = False on the KryptonRibbon to get this…

So now the user gets the same border under both systems as long as they have themes enabled on both operating systems (note that custom chrome is only possible when using a theme such as Luna and Aero). Of course, you can still turn off custom chrome completely by setting the KryptonForm.AllowCustomChrome = False, in which case the ribbon downgrades to using a separate line for the app button and quick access toolbar…

Hopefully this will allow developers to get the appearance they want consistently.

All the major new features have been added so I can now move onto the bug list and wish list items. From time to time people make change requests via the forums or blog comments. I note these down and batch them together for investigation at this stage of development cycle. If they are quick changes and seem likely to benefit many developers than I am happy to implement them.

Here are the set of changes I have just finished for the KryptonRibbon…

AppButtonVisible Property
The application button is placed on the top left of the ribbon…

By setting the new AppButtonVisible property to False you can have it removed from display…

Notice that I have altered the quick access toolbar so it has a rounded appearance on the left edge. Without the app button present the curved edge didn’t look very pretty.

A useful side effect of this is that you more easily use the ribbon away from the usual top location of the form. Here we have a KryptonPanel with a ribbon instance placed inside it. By removing the app button and the quick access toolbar it looks pretty reasonable.

I don’t advocate use of the ribbon away from the intended position at the top of the form but it’s not for me to tell developers how to organize their apps.

Triple.ItemAlignment
When you have a triple container in the medium or small setting it shows the contents in a vertical arrangement. At the moment it always aligns the three items to the left of the vertical. Well now you can use the ItemAlignment property of the triple container to change this. Here you can see the Near, Center and Far settings applied…

This is useful if you are using the items as labels or controls to the right hand side. 

MinimumSize/MaximumSize
Ever needed to place limits on the size of a group? Then the new group level MaximumSize and MinimumSize properties will do the trick. They default to values of -1 which mean they are ignored. The only useful application I can think of is ensuring the group does not become too small if you want the group text to be wider than the contents. Here you can see a group that uses the minimum size to prevent the group text being truncated…

But maybe you will find some essential need for these properties. One thing I have learned over the years is that developers will use your controls in ways you could never have anticipated.

Right, now I need to fix the outstanding ribbon bugs…