Saturday, November 21st, 2009
Please join me in welcoming Billy to the Component Factory team. You can see Billy watching over my shoulder as we start our first pair programming exercise to get him up to speed on the Krypton code. Once his initial training is completed Billy will be handling all technical support calls.
Billy is a 10 week old Galah (a Cockatoo native to Australia) that has been hand reared and so is completely tame. The Galah is a very good mimic and over time should be able to speak a variety of words. He can also live up to 40 years old and so looks like being a permanent member of the family.
Posted in General | 7 Comments »
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
I tried an experiment with twitter and found it did not really help my life. Here is another experiment. I have added myself into LinkedIn with the idea it will build up a network of contacts that will be useful into the future. If you are also on LinkedIn then you can check out my profile and connect up…
LinkedIn Profile
Posted in General | No Comments »
Friday, November 6th, 2009
Krypton 4.1 Beta
For those interested in the new Office 2010 palettes or maybe the new KryptonGroupBox control you can download the Beta of the upcoming 4.1 release from here…
Download Beta
Posted in Krypton Docking, Krypton Navigator, Krypton Ribbon, Krypton Toolkit, Krypton Workspace | 7 Comments »
Friday, October 30th, 2009
I can understand why very few Toolkit developers create their own palettes. It’s taken me three weeks to add three new palettes to match the new Office 2010 themes. Actually I’m still not finished and have only made the changes needed to update the ribbon and a few other related controls.
Office 2010 Blue
Here we have the blue theme in active and inactive states…
Notice that the background of the tabs area also changes with the window activation change. This gives a more consistent feel and makes the ribbon feel part of the window itself because its colour always matches that of the window chrome in the caption area above it. Also note the application button has been replaced with an application tab that is positioned at the start of the tabs area. New properties have been added allowing you to change the default blue colour and default File text.
On the far right of the tabs line you can see a new upwards pointing button. This is used to switch between minimized and full modes and is now present by default for all palettes. There is a new property that allows this to be turned hidden if you prefer to save the space. I think the button is a great idea as most end users are unlikely to discover that double clicking tabs with toggle the minimized mode.
If you look careful you might also have spotted that the cluster buttons no longer show with borders around them. Previously they would have a border around each button but now there is no border unless you actually move the mouse over the button. Instead each cluster has a small separator next to them so they are delineated from other group contents.
Give yourself a pat on the back if you have spotted this final change. Although not obvious the font is half a point smaller than under the Office 2007 themes and this allows more content to fit within the same space.
Office 2010 Silver/Black
Just like Office 2007 there are three themes in total and they are based on the same blue/silver and black base colours…
Aero Glass Support
Under Vista and Windows 7 the ribbon draws a little different to take advantage of the glass look and feel. Here you can see the blue scheme under Windows 7…
The window chrome has been extended downwards over the tabs area. In order to ensure the text for the tabs can still be read the background has a light gradient that extends upwards so that the darker text stands out. I have not managed to draw this exactly the same way as Office 2010 does but it is pretty close.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they do not make any changes between this Beta and the final release. Otherwise I will need to make additional changes. But as they have added all three schemes I expect that any changes are now going to be very minor.
Now onto the task of updating the rest of the controls with new settings.
Posted in Krypton Ribbon, Krypton Toolkit | 12 Comments »
