Professional Windows 7 Development Guide

Chapter 7. Creating Custom Ribbon Interface Applications

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Developing a simple Forms application

• Developing a simple WPF application

As with many new technologies that Microsoft creates, the Ribbon technology designed for Windows 7 targets the C++ developer, not the managed-application developer. Even the tutorials Microsoft provides are for this group of developers (see http://www.microsof.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=F62039AD-A224-4979-AE7F-67B4E09CD81E). Underlying the C++ support are Component Object Model (COM) DLLs. However, don't worry about the lack of material online. This chapter provides a good starting point for your Ribbon experience and then shows a few practical examples of how you can implement the Ribbon in your own application.

Adding the Ribbon to your applications is definitely worthwhile. Chapter 6 points out a number of advantages to using this new interface, especially in certain circumstances that are all too common in the corporate environment today (such as when you have a wealth of novice users who require extra hand-holding). Using the techniques in this chapter will provide you with two main methods of adding the Ribbon to your applications. (In neither case is Visual Studio ready to create a Ribbon-based application immediately.) Here are the methods:

• Rely on an interoperability (interop) module to provide access to the COM modules that C++ developers use to create their applications. Fortunately, there's a third-party library ...