I have a MDI application layed out like Visual Studio 2008. I am already using the AppStylist to give the user different look and feel. But I would like to add the ribbon look and feel too. What would need to be done or how would you go about switching between these styles? Can the two styles exist in the same application?
Steve Graddy MCP, MCAD.NetOrgbrat Consulting
Do you want to add just the rounded form aspect of the applications with ribbons, or would you like to have the ribbon as well as toolbars on your application? If you just want to add the rounded form look, add an UltraToolbarsManager to you Form and set its FormDisplayStyle to RoundedSizable or RoundedFixed. If you would like to have the ribbon and toolbars appear together, make the ribbon visible on your UltraToolbarsManager and disable Office 2007 UI compatibility. Or if you just wanted to use a ribbon but keep the look of VS2008, you can show the ribbon but set the Style of the UltraToolbarsManager to VisualStudio2005.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the quick reply.. I currently have a Visual Styles dropdown in the application's Options dialog. The user can choose what visual style they would like. What I would like to do is if they pick one of the Office 2007 styles ( Blue, Silver, Black styled by Infragistic's AppStylist ), I would like to give the full Ribbon affect to the application. But I did not know how much would be involved to switch back and forth between the Ribbon and the normal looks. What do you think?
I'm still a little unclear. Do you have toolbars on your application and you want them to be hidden when the ribbon shows? If not, then do you just want to rounded form look that is seen in applications with a ribbon for these styles, and the regular form look for other styles? If you have toolbars and you want them hidden when the ribbon shows, just leave Office2007UICompatibility to True, that will hide the toolbars when you set the Ribbon's Visible property to True. If you are just talking about the rounded form aspect, you can just change the FormDisplayStyle of the toolbars manager between Standard and RoundedSizable when the style changes.
Steve
You can display the ribbon and toolbars at the same time by setting Office2007UICompatibility to False. If you set it to False at design time, then set it back to True in your form's constructor, you will only see them at the same time at design time. At run-time, as soon as you show the ribbon, the toolbars will hide.
I believe every tool which can be placed on a toolbar can also be placed on a ribbon group, you will just have to manually add all the existing tools from the toolbars to the ribbon groups.
You are correct in the first statement. I want the Ribbon to be hidden unless they choose certain application styles and then I want the normal toolbars to be hidden and the Ribbon stuff to be shown. When you are in design mode can you have both groups of controls side-by-side? How much of the toolbars buttons and other controls can be incorprated into the ribbons?