Please download using the following direct link…

Download 4.2

Please download using the following direct link…

Download 4.1.5

Major Change
   – Moved all design time classes to separate assembly

New KryptonDataGridView Columns
   – KryptonDataGridViewComboBoxColumn
   – KryptonDataGridViewNumericUpDownColumn
   – KryptonDataGridViewDomainUpDownColumn
   – KryptonDataGridViewMaskedTextBoxColumn
   – KryptonDataGridViewDateTimePickerColumn

Major Bug fixes
   – TAB key works inside Navigator
   – AutoComplete works for KryptonComboBox
   – KryptonGallery memory usage improved

Download Kryton Beta

At the moment Krypton cannot be used in this situation because the Krypton design time classes are placed inside the same assembly as the relevant controls. So the Krypton Toolkit design time classes are inside the Toolkit assembly, Krypton Ribbon design time classes inside the Ribbon assembly and so forth. But the design time assembly is not included in the client profile and so the Krypton assemblies will not be loadable.

To enable this scenario I have now created a new ComponentFactory.Krypton.Design assembly and moved all the design time classes into it. This means you can write a client profile application that references the Krypton Toolkit/Ribbon/Navigator/Workspace/Docking assemblies and it will work just fine because the Krypton assemblies no longer reference the System.Design namespace.

Note that client profiles are a feature exposed in Visual Studio 2010 and so you will only be aware of them if you have downloaded and played with that version.

The single functional change is to the Office 2010 palettes. As the result of a developer poll indicated that people wanted the default size of the Office 2010 palettes changed to match that of the Office 2007 palettes. This change has been made in this release. You can however revert those palettes to the smaller size, or indeed any size you like, using the following example code…

   KryptonManager.PaletteOffice2010Blue.BaseFontSize = 8.5f;
   KryptonManager.PaletteOffice2010Silver.BaseFontSize = 8.5f;
   KryptonManager.PaletteOffice2010Black.BaseFontSize = 8.5f;

This new BaseFontSize property is available on the built-in palettes except the Professional variations. There is also a BaseFontName that allows the font to be changed away from the default Segoe UI setting.
 

Download Link
Download Krypton 4.1.1

Change Lists
Toolkit Change List
Ribbon Change List
Navigator Change List
Workspace Change List
Docking Change List

The extra functionality is a property that sets the base font size…

kryptonManager.PaletteOffice2010Blue.BaseFontSize = 9.5f;

This property is only provided on the built in palettes and can be accessed via the KryptonManager as seen in the above code example. This allows those that would like a bigger font for the Office 2010 palettes to achieve it using the above example code. Please report any issues inside the post comments or via a direct email to myself.

Download 4.1.1

New for Version 4.1
- Office 2010 Blue/Silver/Black Palettes
- Office 2010 Style Ribbon
- KryptonGroupBox
- Various bug fixes

Change Lists
- KryptonToolkitChangeList.doc
- KryptonNavigatorChangeList.doc
- KryptonWorkspaceChangeList.doc
- KryptonRibbonChangeList.doc
- KryptonDockingChangeList.doc

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

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.

Windows 7
The updated Microsoft Paint uses the Windows 7 ribbon control that is provided with the operating system. You can see straight away that it has done away with the application button as an orb and replaced it with a more traditional style button. The groups have also changed and now use a separator on the right hand side instead of having a box drawn around each one.

Office 2010 Technical Preview
This screenshot was taken from an installation inside a virtual machine and so it does not have any Aero glass for the borders. Ignoring that detail we can see that Office 2010 also has a button instead of an orb for the application button. Also note that the button clusters inside the Font group no longer have a border around the buttons themselves. The border only appears when you move the mouse over them.

Office 2010 Beta
This Beta release is only slightly different from the previous technical preview. The main change has been the application button changing to have the more familiar File as its name. I presume that end users find it easier to relate to the traditional File menu option.

Another change that cannot be seen in the screenshots is that the Beta has three color schemes. These are Silver, Blue and Black of which the above screenshot is the Silver variation. So I think the best approach is to add three new palettes that represent those three new schemes. Although only a Beta I believe the fact they have added all three colors means they are pretty much finished in creating the visuals.

New for Version 4.0
   – VS2010 Style Docking system
   – KryptonWrapLabel
   – KryptonSeparator
   – Workspace persistence
   – Workspace max/restore feature
   – Various bug fixes

Change Lists
  – Toolkit
  – Navigator
  – Workspace
  – Ribbon

Reduced Product Line-up
Something like 90% of all sales are for the full Krypton Suite and so I intend to simplify the list of product offerings by selling only the full Suite. Existing customers with the Navigator, Workspace or Ribbon that are still within their 12 month subscription will get a free upgrade to the Suite + Source. So no customers will miss out because of the change in policy.

The Suite will also only be offered with the full source code included so the ability to buy just a license is being removed. Most companies want the source code anyway and so this reduces the number of purchase options making it a simpler decision. So the purchase page is going to have just the Krypton Suite + Source with the only options being the number of licenses you want to buy.

BARGAIN ALERT: Yes, that means you could buy the Navigator at $149 before next Wednesday and get a free upgrade to the full Suite including the source code. Reading my blog means you get the inside track and your reward is a truly once in a lifetime bargain. Or why not get a 4 pack and save even more!

New Pricing
Currently the Suite + Source is priced at $399 (USD) and the new price with the docking system added will be $499 (USD). Looking at other comparable products on the market I still think this is a reasonable price given the extra flexibility and features it offers.

New Licence Options
Last is a change to provide customers with an upper limit on costs. I hope this will tempt more of the larger outfits to consider buying the Suite for the entire development department. I am introducing Site and Enterprise license options.

A Site license will allow an unlimited number of developers within your organization but limited to one geographic location. An Enterprise license allows for an unlimited number of developers at an unlimited number of locations for your organization. Customers with 16 or more licenses at the moment will be offered the chance to convert to either the Site or Enterprise depending on their licenses requirements.

This new beta has quite a few changes based on the feedback from testers of the first version earlier in the week. Most of the changes are in the date time picker and month calendar controls. Here is a full list of changes since the first beta…

KryptonDateTimePicker

• Text property now returns the actual displayed text, used to always return an empty string.
• MouseWheel now performs the key up/down action of the active text field.
• Entering 31 for the day number would not select the correct day.
• Up/Down actions on the day would not overflow within the same month.
• Mouse down on non-day parts of calendar would dismiss the context menu.

KryptonMonthCalendar

• Drawing was corrupted for many non-English culture settings.
• Can now set the background to transparent so parent background shows through.
• Changing the DayStyle could crash when using a KryptonPalette.
• When number of rows and columns were different mouse selection could crash.
• Can now enter 1 or 2 digits for the descriptive month field to change the value.

Other

• Palette upgrade tool now converts versions 12 and below to latest version 13.
• Switching Navigator between Outlook modes would cause a crash.
• KryptonComboBox would select text when you minimize/restore the form.

Download Beta 2

KryptonDateTimePicker
KryptonMonthCalendar
DateTimePicker for KryptonRibbon
MonthCalendar for KryptonContextMenu
Per-KryptonPage ButtonSpecs
Many bug fixes (consult change lists)

I will create a forum so that bugs and other feedback can be logged for the beta specific release.

Download Beta

Download Link for 3.0.6

Major Bug Fixes
- Locking/Unlocking computer causes text to disappear.
- Text not drawing at all for some Visual Studio projects.
- ComboBox drop down not working on some computers.
- Cannot edit Image properties with KryptonContextMenu.
- Design time change of Ribbon.MinimizedMode crashes.
- Removing all Ribbon tabs still draws last tab shown.

Feature Changes
- KryptonDomainUpDown added to the Toolkit.
- KryptonBreadCrumb now has overflow button feature.

If you have a valid subscription to one of the commercial products the you should already have received an email notification with download details. You do not need new serial keys, existing 3.0 keys will work just fine. Also remember to uninstall your current version before installing the new one.

This release is mostly about fixing bugs, in particular the design time experience as well as the various Toolkit controls that have issues with sizing and drawing. It also contains an additional bonus in the form of three new built-in palettes. These new palettes are inspired by the Vista and Windows Media Player 11 appearance and provide an interesting alternative to the business orientated Office 2007 palettes.

Change highlights
 - New palette Sparkle Blue
 - New palette Sparkle Orange
 - New palette Sparkle Purple
 - Design time exceptions fixed
 - KryptonComboBox bug fixes
 - Plus many other bug fixes

Download 2.8.5 Now

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.

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!

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.

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…

Gallery presented at runtime…

Using the drop down button with ranges defined… 

If you reduce the space enough then the gallery will turn into a large button to save space. Once you press the button it then shows the gallery drop down…

This is the last new feature of the upcoming release. Now I need to dive into documenting and updating samples.

Here is a KryptonGallery on a panel…

Use the up/down buttons on the right side to scroll the displayed line and so access other images not currently visible. Because the above example is already on the top line the up arrow has been disabled, there are no lines above it to scroll into view.

It is possible to show more than a single line of images using the control. Just change the height so that the client area is tall enough to accommodate a second line and it will automatically do so. The control always tries to display as many images as possible given the available client space.

Clicking the drop down button shows a context menu that has all the images ready for user selection. In this example we have defined 16 images…

Be default the number of images per context menu line is that same as that currently showing in the gallery, in our case 4 wide. This way the context menu width is about the same as the client area of the gallery.

There are a couple of control properties than can be used to set the min/max number of items per line of the menu. This is required to intelligently handle edge cases. Imagine your gallery is reduced in width to show just a single image at a time. Now pressing the drop down button gives a context menu where it has just a single image per line, making it 16 rows high! Not an intelligent use of screen space. In that case having a minimum drop width of say 4 would be sensible.

Just before the context menu is shown an event is fired that allows you to customize the contents of the menu. This is great for situations where you want to add extra options. Here is an example where I add a horizontal separator and a Clear menu option in the event handler.

Finally we have the DropRanges collection property that is exposed by the KryptonGallery. If you ignore this collection property then you get the default appearance as seen previously, with all the images shown as one large group in the context menu. If you need to provide titled sections instead then add a KryptonGalleryDropRange per titled  group to the collection.

The following image shows the result of adding two range definitions…

The first has a title of Text and is defined to show the first 8 images, the second group has a title of Arrows and shows the last 8 images. You can create as many ranges as you like and specify the range of images to show for each one. The combination of ranges and the ability to customize the menu using an event gives you full and easy control over the appearance.

Update: I just noticed the date, no this is not an April fools joke!

As you may know, each group item has three possible sizes and the shrinking algorithm automatically downgrades items to smaller sizes when there is not enough space. So a triple container with three buttons might start off in Large size but progressively down shift to Medium and then Small as space becomes constrained. This is fine for buttons because we can easily define three distinct ways of drawing the buttons in those sizes.

The gallery component actually needs to be sized in more than 3 variations. To show this we have the following image that demos a simple group that is shrinking as size is decreased…

Our gallery still has the concept of being in Large, Medium or Small setting. But it has a couple of extra properties called LargeItemCount and MediumItemCount. At the top of the above image you can see the group when it has as much space as it wants, where the gallery is in Large setting and the default value of 6 is assigned to the LargeItemCount. You can see the gallery is displaying with 6 images.

As space becomes constrained it will reduce the size of the gallery by one item at a time until it reaches the MediumItemCount count and which point it enters the Medium setting. The MediumItemCount value is defaulted as 3. You can see this process occuring in the top four instances of the group in the above image. Each time it shrinks, one more item is removed from the gallery until it finally reaches MediumItemCount.

Notice that during this shrinking it has left the two buttons unchanged. This is because the shrinking algorithm has been changed to not only progressively reduce the gallery from LargeItemCount to MediumItemCount but also to always reduce the size of all the galleries to Medium before it reduces the size of other group elements. This is reasonable as the gallery should take up as much room as it wants if the space is available. Once the gallery is down to the minimum size required for showing a full gallery, the Medium setting, then the usual shrink semantics you are familiar with are applied. Where elements are shrunk in turn from right to left in a cyclic fashion.

The second to last instance in the above image shows that now other group elements are included in shrinking and so the buttons are reduced in size. Finally the gallery enters the Small setting, in the last example above, which replaces the full gallery appearance with the button appearance.

Of course, this sounds much more complicated than it appears when you actually play around with it. In practice you just need to set the LargeItemCount to the number of items you want to appear when space is unlimited and then set MediumItemCount to the number of items that are shown just before it is removed in favor of a button appearance. Just let the ribbon take care of the details at runtime!

(Note that the ribbon can handle multiple galleries inside a single group. In that case they will be shrunk in turn until all have reached the MediumItemCount values and then all the other elements are again including in shrink calculations.)

After adding many new Toolkit controls/components it was time to do those tasks that all programmers hate, samples and documentation. Essential work, but not the kind you can really blog about! In the tradition of always showing lots of pictures, here is my pic about the samples work…

With all the recent additions the free Toolkit now has 26 controls/components that are available from the toolbox at design time. And this does not include the list of various items that can be added to the KryptonContextMenu which would expand it even more! Amazing how small changes add up over time.

Feedback on the KryptonContextMenu has been that adding/removing items is not as easy as people would like. Adding a full design time experience like the ToolStrip functionality would take far too long to implement so I compromised with the following collection editor instead… 

This appears when you use the edit button of the KryptonContextMenu items collection. It shows a TreeView on the left with the hierarchy of context items. In the middle are buttons making it quick and easy to add new items and on the right, not visible above, is a property grid showing properties of the selected item. I hope this makes life a little easier in future.

Now onto something far more exciting. The KryptonRibbon needs a gallery feature in order to fully mimic the functionality available in the Office 2007 version. Rather than restricting this to the ribbon I think it would be quite useful as a standalone control as well. After all, the gallery control is really just a way to select from a list of multiple images. Something that is required outside the ribbon scenario. So here is what i have so far…

I have only just begun the control but you can see that it is coming along nicely. We have the three buttons on the right hand side for scrolling the view and dropping down a context menu. I will post about the gallery control in more detail once I have something closer to the finished product.

Instead of setting the same state into multiple controls you just assign the state to a single instance of the KryptonCommand and then assign the command object to the controls. Now when you update the command it automatically updates all the controls for you. Here are a set of Krypton Toolkit controls placed on a KryptonPanel…

I now create a KryptonCommand and set its image to be that of an angel and the text properties to something simple. Assigning the command instance to each controls KryptonCommand property updates them to the following…

Now any change to the command object is reflected in all the controls immediately. So if I change the commands Checked property to be True you get the following…

Obviously not all the controls have the ability to represent a checked state, so only the ones where it is relevant are updated. For example the label controls obviously cannot be checked and so ignore this setting.

Notice at the bottom that you can assign the command to individual ButtonSpec instances. This applies to button specs on the Ribbon, Navigator and all relevant Toolkit controls. This is a two way process, so if you click a button that understands the checked property then it alters the command to reflect this checked state change.

Relevant KryptonRibbon elements have also been updated to the use the command. Here we have a ribbon group with some standard elements being displayed…

And once the command is assigned…

With the KryptonCommand.Checked = True…

If I now clicked on the first button element so that it was no longer checked then the other checked items would automatically become unchecked as well. This is because any change is reflected back to the command instance and all other controls attached to the command are therefore updated as well.  Although not shown above, the quick access toolbar buttons also take the command object.

The KryptonCommand issues a couple of events so that you can hook into a change in any of the properties and also be notified whenever the command needs to be executed. This allows the real power of the components to be unleashed.

A typical scenario might be handling the print action within your application. You create a command that has the appropriate text and images for indicating this print option. Then you can assign this command to a ribbon quick access toolbar button, a ribbon group button, a standalone button inside the client area and even to a button spec on a header. Whenever any of these elements is clicked you get the Execute event and can perform the actual printing action. If you decide to disable printing then just set the command Enabled property to False and all are updated immediately.

Now you can easily update and retain state without having to worry about updating every relevant control in your application. Once your application starts to grow this can become a real headache unless you deliberately manage this issue. Well now you can handle it with ease!

There are several points to note. First of all the color button is just an extension of the existing button element and so everything you can do with buttons you can also do with color buttons. So you can make the button a Push, Check, DropDown or Split type depending on your application requirements.

Use the SelectedColor property to define the current color of the element. You can see in the above image that a portion of the element image has a solid block of color drawn to indicate the selected color. This is drawn automatically for you. As the user selects new colors, or you programmatically alter the selection, this block will be updated.

Of course, you might decide this default block size and position are not appropriate for you. No problem, just alter the SelectedRect property to indicate where you would prefer it to be drawn. This image shows the top entry with the default rectangle but the ones below have been modified to different values…

Note that the color block is drawn over the top of the image so you will want to synchronize the image and block position so they complement each other.

There are some cases where you might want to allow the specification of no color at all. In this case you just assign the Color.Empty value to the SelectedColor property. The user can do this using the ‘No Color’ entry in the context menu as seen in the first image above. A Color.Empty value is not drawn as a solid block because it would result in nothing being drawn! Instead a border is drawn around the color area using the EmptyBorderColor. This picture shows just this scenario for two of the color buttons.

There are various other properties for controlling which entries are shown in the context menu but I will not list them all here. Suffice it to say that you can customize the look using just design time properties to work in a reasonable way for most application needs. If that is still not enough you can hook into the DropDown event and completely alter the context menu contents as you please.

I was hoping to avoid the need for a maintenance release this time around but it was not to be. The initial release has a nasty exception that occurs when showing a KryptonContextMenu when the OS is setup to show sub menus immediately.

Download Link
http://www.componentfactory.com/downloads/KryptonToolkit271.zip

Change Lists
http://www.componentfactory.com/…/KryptonToolkitChangeList.doc
http://www.componentfactory.com/…/KryptonRibbonChangeList.doc
http://www.componentfactory.com/…/KryptonNavigatorChangeList.doc

What better Xmas present than a release of Krypton!  Use the link below to download the Krypton Toolkit immediately. If you have paid for one of the commercial options then you will get an automatic email notification with the next day with your new serial key and source code as appropriate.

Download Link
http://www.componentfactory.com/downloads/KryptonToolkit270.zip

New Features
- KryptonTextBox
- KryptonMaskedTextBox
- KryptonRichTextBox
- KryptonComboBox
- KryptonContextMenu
- Ribbon Application Menu
- Ribbon uses KryptonTextBox et al
- Navigator/Ribbon use of KryptonContextMenu

If we switch the InputControlStyle to be Ribbon and set the AlwaysActive property to False then we get the following appearance instead…

As with the other input controls you can add ButtonSpec definitions so that extra buttons are added inside the border…

The button specs could be really handy for setting common values. You could have a button that is used to set the date to something appropriate such as ‘today’.  Another might be used clear the current value and a last one that brings up some help page information.

I have added support for adding the KryptonMaskedTextBox inside the KryptonRibbon as well…

Here you can see the current button…

And now the new version…

I’m sure you will agree it looks much better. It might seen a trivial issue but given how prominent the application button is in a ribbon based app I think it improves the whole feel of the application.

Now I need to update all the samples and documentation to reflect the new ribbon features in the upcoming release.

Note that if you leave the list empty it does not show the recent documents column, so if this feature is not relevant to your application you can avoid having it displayed by just leaving that collection empty. You can also alter the Recent Documents title that appears at the top of the column. This allows you to repurpose the column, for example you could change the text to Recent Users and then provide a list of recent usernames for selection.

Also notice the provision of buttons at the bottom of the app menu. These are just ButtonSpec definitions specified using the new RibbonAppButton -> AppButtonSpecs property.

In case you missed it I will point out that the bottom half of the app button is now draw as part of the app menu so that it appears to be underneath the app button.

But there is still one last feature to implement. When you select a context menu that has a sub menu you currently get the following display…

This is incorrect as the sub menu should be forced to the same size and position as the recent documents column. You might not have noticed this when using the Office 2007 applications, give it a go now and notice how all the first level sub menus appear as an area that completely covers the recent documents area.

A new property called AppButtonMenuItems allows you to specify the set of items in the menu portion of the window. Anything that can be placed into a KryptonContextMenu can also go here, so you can have headers, separators, menu items and any other types added in the future.

Another new property AppButtonSpecs allows you to specify a set of ButtonSpec definitions. These are displayed on the bottom line of the window and can be seen above as Options and Exit buttons. These allow all the options of Toolkit ButtonSpec definitions, so you can specify an image, text and extra text values.

There are ribbon level events for the Opening, Opened, Closing and Closed actions on the application menu. These operate in the same way as the events on a KryptonContextMenu. They allow you to cancel the showing of the menu and also customize and update item state before the menu is shown.

TODO

1, I need to get the bottom half of the application button drawing in the popup window so it looks as if the window is placed underneath the application button.

2, Allow the definition of a ‘Recently Documents’ list of items. These items would be shown as a vertical list to the right of the menu items and mimic the ‘Recent Documents’ list of Office 2007. This feature would be optional so that applications that do not need this ability can provide no entries and so the list would not be shown.

3, Implement correct keyboard operation. At the moment only the menu items respond to the TAB and navigation keys. I need to get the button specs and the ‘Recent Document’ entries integrated into the keyboard actions.

4, Any other developer requests that seem reasonable!

 Not much difference from the previous menu except it has the correct border rounding and a heading as the first item. You can also specify our new menu as the context menu to be shown for a drop down or split style group button. Here you can see one being shown…

But you are not forced into using the KryptonContextMenu, you can still assign a standard ContextMenuStrip as in the past and it will use that. So your existing code will continue to work and you can migrate across ‘as and when’ you decide to do so.

If you wondering about the special context menu that appears from the application button then do not worry. I have no forgotten about it. Once all the controls are updated and documentation added I will be releasing a CTP so early adopters can play around with the latest bits. Then I will get to work on the app button context menu for the full release towards the end of the year.

You could use this ability to turn a simple text box into a search/find box…

Or maybe as a shortcut for the user to ask for additional help. Or to bring up a dialog box for providing advanced settings. The uses are limitless and make it quick and easy for you to make it obvious the extra feature is associated with the input control.

And now in the enabled state…

Once the control receives focus, or if the mouse moves over it, then they change color to show they are active. Here you can see the combo box control becoming active as the mouse hovers over it…

Pressing the drop down button produces the expected result…

To modify the settings of the element you just need to click them at design time and the Properties tool window will show a large range of options, the same set of properties available when the controls are used standalone. There is also a property exposed, although not at design time, for getting direct access to the underlying control instance. So you can access the actual KryptonComboBox instance by using the ComboBox property of the appropriate ribbon element.

Use the following link to download
http://www.componentfactory.com/downloads/KryptonToolkit260.zip

Toolkit Change Highlights
  KryptonCheckBox control added
  KryptonRadioButton control added
  KryptonDataGridView control added
  ToolTips added for button specs

Navigator Change Highlights
  2 x Ribbon modes added
  OutlookMini mode added
  ToolTips added for button specs
  ToolTips added for page headers
  Popup pages added for tab strip style modes
  Page selection via mnemonics

Ribbon Change Highlights
  CheckBox element added
  RadioButton element added
  CustomControl element added
  ToolTips added for button specs
  ToolTips added for relevant element types

Regards
Component Factory Pty Ltd

Slow Design Time Performance
When using many Krypton controls on a Form the design time experience can slow down dramatically. Even worse it can become pretty much unusable when you have many containers with many controls inside them. This is not an uncommon scenario as many applications have a Navigator for displaying multiple pages and then each page contains many child controls.

The root of the problem was the helper glyph that is presented on container controls such as the KryptonGroup, KryptonGroupHeader, KryptonNavigator etc. This glyph appears in the bottom right hand corner of the container and allows the developer to click the glyph to select the container control. This is handy when you KryptonGroup has a border of just 1 pixel and so requires you to click exactly that 1 pixel wide area to select the group control. Unfortunately this glyph implementation at design time was causing the horrible performance hit.

So version 2.6 has removed the glyph selection feature entirely in order to remove the performance problem. As an alternative way of selecting controls at design time I recommend you use the View -> Other Windows -> Document Outline display. This window problems a TreeView that allows you to see the hierarchy of controls on the Form and selection of a control by clicking the tree node of interest.

TextBox Usage on MDI Child Forms
When placing TextBox and some other controls onto an MDI child form the controls are not always usable. In particular you might have noticed that right clicking the TextBox does not show the context menu that you would normally expect. This has been fixed so that MDI child forms working correctly.

GDI Object Leak
If you create a KryptonForm derived Form and then show and dispose of it there is a GDI object leak of two handles. Although only a small leak this can add up when you applications makes extensive use of windows and runs for a long period of time. This leak has been fixed.

There are quite a few other fixes but these three are the current highlights. Check out the release notes when the latest version is installed in order to see a definitive list of all new features and bugs fixed.

Toolkit Highlights
KryptonCheckBox added
KryptonRadioButton added
KryptonDataGridView added
ToolTips added for button specs

Navigator Highlights
2 x Ribbon modes added
OutlookMini mode added
ToolTips added for button specs
ToolTips added for page headers
Popup pages added for tab strip style modes
Page selection via mnemonics

Ribbon Highlights
CheckBox element added
RadioButton element added
CustomControl element added
ToolTips added for button specs
ToolTips added for relevant element types

Release Warnings!
All new features have been added but the bug list has not been processed yet, so many bugs reported in the past few months have not yet been investigated and fixed. Hence you might still find a bug that you have already reported in the past. Don’t worry, this will be worked on before the full release.

I wanted to get the Beta out so people can play around with the new features and provide feedback whilst I work on the bug list, this giving time for feedback to be incorporated before the full release occurs.

The palette definition file has not been tested and updated and so use of palette definitions files might not work very well at the moment. I cannot guarantee that loading a previously saved palette file will work in this version. This will be addressed in the full release of course.

Here we have some standard Button instances placed into a group.

Or some RichTextBox instances.

Finally some other standard controls.

At design time this works by adding a Custom Control element in the location you would like the control to be positioned. You then assign a reference to the actual control to be shown to the KryptonRibbonGroupCustomControl.CustomControl property.

Assignment can happen either at design time or more likely in the Load event of your Form. To ensure the control is the required width you should assign an appropriate size to the controls MinimumSize property. There will be sample in the next release that you can examine if you want to see the exact mechanism used.

They can be displayed as full height elements as above or as medium sized elements when required.

Finally here we see them used inside a lines type container. So they can be used in all the same places that a button or label element can already be used.

Note that with the radio button element it will automatically uncheck all other radio buttons in the same group whenever one becomes checked. You can turn off this automatic ability by setting the AutoCheck to False if you prefer to manually check/uncheck the radio buttons.

The following image shows a tooltip for a quick access toolbar button. In this case I provided the tooltip text by setting the ToolTipBody property of the button instance.

The application button also shows a tooltip when the mouse hovers over it. Here I have provided strings for the ToolTipBody and the ToolTipTitle properties.

Buttons and labels inside the ribbon groups can have tooltips. Notice that the tooltip is displayed below the bottom of the ribbon client area in order to mimic the Office 2007 ribbon functionality.

For the buttons inside the Include group I have supplied an image by using the ToolTipImage property as well as text using the ToolTipBody and ToolTipTitle text properties.

I never really considered this scenario as I assumed that no one would want to completely disable the ribbon. I assumed a disabled ribbon would make the whole application inoperable and therefore not a very useful capability. However, I have learnt over the years that people will use your software in ways you would never think of, and with a good reason.

So here is the ribbon in normal enabled mode…

And now disabled…

Here is a tool tip for the form close button that has been defined with an exaggerated rounding.

And the Navigator with a popup page.

Here we have a KryptonHeader with a tool tip defined.

This also works for the KryptonHeaderGroup.

The min/max/close buttons on a KryptonForm are just internally defined button specs. Note that the tooltip text for these standard button types is defined in the palette. So if you need to change the displayed text for them you just need to drop a KryptonPalette on your form, alter the tool tip text and then use that new palette instance instead of the built in palette.

And now to the KryptonNavigator control.

Although I do not have an example image the KryptonRibbon will also show tool tips for the user defined button specs that appear on the tabs line of the ribbon control. Later on I will be adding further tool tip support specific to the ribbon and so will post about that in the future.

Open a command prompt with administrator privileges
- Click the Start Button
- Type ‘cmd’ in the search box
- Right click ‘cmd’ entry and use ‘Run as administrator’

Navigate to the ‘\Help\Help2Install’ subdirectory
- cd ‘c:\Program Files\Component Factory Pty Ltd\Krypton Toolkit 2.5.1\Help\Help2Install’

Run ‘RegisterHelp2.bat .’
- Yes that is a dot as the batch file parameter

View the installed help collection
- Run Krypton Explorer
- Select the ‘Resources’ option
- Select the ‘Documentation’ hyperlink

To manually add the templates you can use the following steps…

Find the installation directory of Visual Studio
- Open up the registry using ‘regedit’
- Open up ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0’
- Note the directory of the ‘InstallDir’ value

Copy template zip files to correct subdirectory
- Copy *ProjectCS.zip files to ‘[InstallDir]\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Windows’
- Copy the other .zip files to ‘[InstallDir]\ItemTemplates\CSharp’

Ask Visual Studio to install the templates
- Click the Start Button
- Type ‘cmd’ in the search box
- Right click ‘cmd’ entry and use ‘Run as administrator’
- Change directory to [InstallDir]
- Run ‘devenv.exe /installvstemplates’

To show you the difference the following image has the old colors on the left side and the new colors on the right.

Although a small change I hope you agree it improves the overall appearance. Now here are the old and new colors for the Windows Classic window settings.

Release Highlights
Krypton Ribbon added to suite.
Vista glass support added to custom chrome.
Performance improvements with custom chrome.
Now installs Krypton Visual Studio templates (except on Vista)
Now auto adds Krypton components to Toolbox (except on W2k)
Bug fixes.