Windows Development: Windows Ribbon

WINDOWS Feature Area Overview

This tutorial is for C + + programmers who develop desktop applications and want to take advantage of the Windows Ribbon framework. The experiment steps will help you add an empty ribbon to your small application, add multiple controls to the Ribbon that contain icons, labels, and other resources, and then connect the controls to the command structures that already exist in your application. You will learn how the API maintains the separation of control organization and event handling. Finally, this tutorial will show you how to customize an interface and resize behavior to demonstrate how the Ribbon adapts and runs in different sizes. As you complete the experiment, you will learn all the necessary steps to add and customize a basic Ribbon in your application.

This tutorial will involve compiling the code at run time and marking the copied content in the document. In an event, a copy error (or other problem) prevents the application from compiling, and you can find all completed examples in the completion source code of each tutorial. These examples can be used to help you avoid compilation errors, or can be used as the beginning of the next exercise.

Requirements

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (or later)

This tutorial uses Visual Studio and references configuration (configuring) in several places. Of course, it is not necessary to use this environment to create a ribbon, and this tutorial assumes that you have installed Visual Studio 2005 (or later) on your system.

Note: Of course, Visual Studio Express editions can be used to create a ribbon that lacks some of the necessary features to complete this tutorial.

windows 7 SDK (v7.0, RC build)

This tutorial was released for the first time as a hands-on experiment in the October 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008). With the release of the Windows 7 SDK RC, it also has some updates.

Note: We recommend that the SDK should be installed after Visual Studio installation. This will help you prevent problems with a potential SDK version conflict at compile time. If you are having problems compiling your code, follow the "special attention" Step on page 9th, which may help you.

Learning Goals

As you go through this tutorial, you will learn how to:

• Configure a Visual Studio project to use the Ribbon

• Integrate the Ribbon with the Win32 window (HWND)

• Add controls, such as buttons, check boxes, tabs, area

• Connect the Ribbon control to the application business code

• Adjust the layout of controls and define how the Ribbon is resized

Resolving Windows Ribbon

This tutorial uses the common Windows Ribbon Special term to describe different parts of the UI. The chart below should help you describe what these sections include and where to find them:

Consider from the user's perspective

Before you begin this tutorial, it is helpful to understand the following items (although they are not necessary):

Win32 Development and C + + language

• Basic understanding of COM programming and concepts

Visual Studio