The WPF Studio 2010.1 version that is planned for release in April includes a number of updates to Ribbon. We’ll highlight some of these over the coming days.
Ribbon templates updated to the “Scenic” look
Many customers have voiced their opinions that we need to migrate to the newer ribbon look that is in the Windows 7 “Scenic” ribbon, and the Office 2010 ribbon. So that’s what we’ve done… here is a preview of how the Ribbon will look in the 2010.1 version:
And here is a screenshot of the Ribbon in its Office blue theme when not using glass, and the application button is clicked…
Brief change list
These main changes have been made:
- The application button is no longer an “orb”. It now matches how all of the more modern ribbons are made, which have a File button in the tab row that is more discoverable by end users. On a side note, you can customize the application button to show an image instead. We’ll show that in the next post.
- The application button is now completely in the tab area of the ribbon.
- The RibbonWindow’s Icon is now always visible.
- The QAT (when above the ribbon) is now aligned right next to the window icon.
- The QAT (when above the ribbon) is now rendered a bit differently, and is cleaner. It no longer has borders or a background.
- The application menu is rendered slightly differently to mesh better with the new application button look.
- All outer glows no longer use bitmap effects, which are not supported by Microsoft in .NET 4.0. WPF Studio 2010.1 moves its minimum requirements to .NET 3.5 SP1. We have taken advantage of .NET 3.5 SP1’s shader effects to achieve outer glows now.
Summary
We have some other interesting new features to go along with the template updates. We’ll get into those in forthcoming posts.
Also, this first release will align our product with the Scenic ribbon layout. We have further plans to make the ribbon groups attain the more flat look found in Office 2010 but those updates will be done sometime after the WPF Studio 2010.1 release.