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…
April 8th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Great idea to have a property to hide the AppButton.
Any news about the icon on the AppButton? Please look at my last post in the following thread:
http://www.componentfactory.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=688&start=20
I would be great to have a little more flexibility – or do I just miss something?
April 8th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
I have no plan on changing the way images are drawn in the app button. The currently capability is perfectly fine.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Hi,
there are two bugs when using the toolkit/ribbon under Vista. I thought I posted them on the forums already, but I cannot find the posting any more. Anyway:
- If you have set the windows taskbar to autohide and you add a ribbon and a navigator, the taskbar is always hidden (although it should appear above the application window, like it does on all other applications).
- The main window title is black instead of white, as it should be.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Some time ago, I asked about having the app button with an normal toolbar, is there any news on this?
Muchas gratias,
David
April 8th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
If my understanding is correct, AppButton is a must if you agree with Fluent UI License from Microsoft. So before trying AppButtonVisible = false I will contact Microsoft at first.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
DavisS: There is no plan on adding a toolbar with application button at the moment. I don’t see a big demand for this from the market place.
LexYLi: You are right that the Microsoft license requires an application button if you are agreeing to their license for your application. So it is upto each customer to decide if they are going to sign up to the license or not.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
The toolbar thing is a good idea, perhaps people dont have the imagination, most people seem only to be able to agree or disagree with an idea, not to propose one.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I think, many people have feature request (me included). Why don’t you create a special list in your forums and let the people vote for them. This would give us a democratic way to take influence of the implementation of new features.
Tom