Why such a complex form should be filled in order to see the preview version of the WPF Ribbon? Addresses, phones, etc...

Agree with Denis. I understand if this is the RTM, but this is just the preview version, isn't it?

Where can we provide feedback for the Ribbon?

This NOT OPEN SOURCE, so this should really be removed from codeplex.

I agree with johncarry, this really shouldn't be a project on CodePlex. Lets not have another Sandcastle debacle.

What is the difference between Ribbon and RibbonWindow? I noticed this on the new .NET 4.0 Framework Poster under Client System.Windows.Controls.
http://brad_abrams.members.winisp.net/Projects/PDC2008/DotNet4Poster/DotNetFramework4PosterDeepZoom.htm

It seems that is mandatory to associate at least one application when accepting the License. However, if I've never developed an application of this kind and I'd like to try the Ribbon, which steps do I have to follow? Thanks so much.

We do understand the frustration about the Ribbon License and are looking into improving this model for the final release. However, we think it is valuable to direct customers and partners to the Office UI Licensing site even though it's only a preview since the current plan of record is that it will required that the Office Licensing Guidelines are followed when developing a shipping product which uses the WPF Ribbon (or any other Ribbon UI, whether it be a third party WPF Ribbon or the MFC Ribbon, etc.). We wanted to make sure that all Ribbon developers were aware of this requirement, since it would be a shame if you started developing an application using the preview and added some customizations which were in violation of the Office Fluent UI License, only to discover months later when we release V1 that you'll need to tear out all of that work. We definitely hear your feedback, though, and are looking into modifying these licensing requirements for V1.

In the meantime, if you're only looking to play around with the Ribbon and don't have a product which you plan to use it in, you can just write that on the form in place of a product name (for example, on the license which I signed, I just wrote "WPF Ribbon" as the product name). The Office Licensing team is aware that developers are going to the site just to try out the Ribbon, so they will understand if you don't list an application on the form.

Thank you for all of the great feedback.

aelij, you can provide feedback for Ribbon in the Discussions and Issues section of this site, just like you would for DataGrid or any of the other controls. Thanks!

shaggygi, The RibbonWindow is a new root element (derived from Window) which enables the Ribbon to integrate with the non-client area in the title bar. The Ribbon control can be used within a RibbonWindow, or if you don't need title bar integration, you can use it in a standard Window or in Page (if you plan to host your app in the browser). We created RibbonWindow as a convenience since writing the interop code to achieve title bar integration required a non-trivial amount of work. For an example of how to use RibbonWindow, I recommend checking out this Hands-on-Lab: http://windowsclient.net/downloads/folders/hands-on-labs/entry76491.aspx

johncarry and Oppositional - Thank you for voicing your concerns. I understand that this Codeplex project is not currently open source, but we are looking into opening it up to community contributions in the future. In the meantime, we got approval from the Codeplex team to use the site in its current form since it offered great tools for collecting feedback, is a convenient, agile mechanism for releasing source code out of band, and also is a familiar environment to many WPF developers. We looked into many options before settling on Codeplex and agreed that this would be the best option.

It would be nice to have a dummy working ribbon sample...
Right now I'm using trial and error to create my first Ribbon UI, this is somewhat frustrating...

I saw the walkthrough! ;-)
http://windowsclient.net/wpf/wpf35/wpf-35sp1-ribbon-walkthrough.aspx

I wouldn't sweat the license page. When Microsoft wants us to take the ribbon seriously they'll remember the whole "developers developers" speech and just slap it on the toolbox in devstudio where it belongs. Until that happens, passing it off as the new standard in UI while making us jump through flaming hoops is just silly. Rather like if they had shipped Forms without menus and toolbars. I mean, if this is the New Deal then why is it easier to get my hands on finished, 3rd party controls than it is to get a ribbon out of Microsoft ?

By the way, this is no reflection on this particular implementation of the ribbon and I certainly don't hold Samantha or that team responsible. It would be neat if you could talk some sense into them though. Working Developers > Office Team lawyer whims. No exceptions. Ever.

How i get the the WPF ribbon and datagrid because i allready istalled a SP1 for vs08 and i couldn't find the new things

sbruno, Thanks for your understanding :-) We are working with the Office and legal teams to try to make this easier for you guys in the future.

FouadS, you have to download the controls separately via this site and the Office UI Licensing site referenced on this page - they're not included in VS 2008 SP1. For DataGrid, go to [url:this page|http://www.codeplex.com/wpf/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=15598]. For Ribbon, follow the instructions above to get to the Office UI Licensing site.

is there any SP2 you are planning to ship it and ship the new control in it , or you are focusing on the VS2010
thank you so much

Hi FouadS - Our next WPF platform release will be .NET 4.0, but the current plan of record is for Ribbon to remain an out-of-band release. The Ribbon control will work with .NET 3.5 and all later releases.

I recommend people check out this guys blog post which contains an example of how to use the ribbon control: http://www.chakkaradeep.com/blog/proper-way-to-create-menus-submenus-in-wpf-ribbon/ There is a code example that is excellent in demonstrating most of the visual features of the ribbon control.

One other thing @SamanthaMSFT it would be good if we could legally use the preview in our applications at our own risk. Otherwise my company may have to look else where. There are alternatives even in java like: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://www.blogjava.net/beansoft/archive/2007/10/07/150887.html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=3&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Djava%2Bribbon%2Bcontrol%2Bopen%2Bsource%26start%3D10%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN

I get that you want to protect the Office look and feel etc. but I could implement or buy or find another ribbon control and not end up agreeing to your license. So the license seems to be restrictive to your community but not to rival communities/groups. I am down with not competing with office, but i want the ability to use the ribbon potentially in a commercial context at our own risk as it currently is. My issue is that I am pushing really hard at work to get my team to adopt WPF and it is a hard fight battling legal concerns of this license and the team who are used to winforms.

Ridiculous! So complex process! and now Office UI license site down for maintenance!

I'm getting "Access is denied" information, even though I'm signed in. Any ideas what's wrong?

Hi all, I have the same problem: access denied. Any suggestions?

rhwilburn, Yes, we do understand the frustration and are working with Office to hopefully make this process easier in the future. Also, as far as I understand, I believe that all of the third party Ribbon controls (and developers who choose to use them) are subject to the Office Fluent UI License the same way that the official control is. I know that this is true for Ribbon controls developed by Microsoft for other platforms (MFC and Win7, for example), and I know that the third-party WPF control developers who license Ribbons (and I believe their customers) are also subject to the license. That being said, I can see why the licensing restrictions would pose a hurdle for adoption and we are as eager as you are to make WPF adoption as easy as possible. Thank you for all of the feedback. If you have any questions about the license (including whether or not a certain control is subject to it) or about why the license was developed, I urge you to contact the Office Licensing Team at officeui@microsoft.com.

Just a general comment on WPF controls.
I am developing with wpf as long as it got released.
Currently, I am really a bit, mildly speaking, frustrated.
WPF is such a nice and powerful technology, however, a getting the impression, that MS does rush only half completed features on developers market.
I can only adopt WPF in an enterprise application, if I am willing to look for 3rd Party controls...
no docking control, to simulate mdi behaviour, no datagrid making it almost impossible to develop
data drive apps, no numericupdown... this list can easily be extended.
Same almost holds true for the entity framework, the designer is almost unusable when updating the model.
And no, eg a slidercontrol by no way replaces a numericupdown...
All in all, the whole wpf framework seems a bit unfinished at the moment.
I'd be nice, if MS were to deliver some highly needed controls and EFv2 before VS 2010 & .net 4.0.
What is the point in having a very nice technology, if I need to constantly look for 3rd party controls to fill in the gap MS left?
Together with this ridiculously difficult officeUI licensing, I find it really sad, that MS seems to deliver half baked things.
One can only wonder, if that strategy will be successful, getting devs to adopt wpf quickly, especially if you got team members used to forms.

whats the timeplan for v1? it looks like it brings some pretty breaking (but sensible) changes (should i wait for V1 or not is what im trying to decide)

id also like to bump that this licence deal is just redicolous.. how is this suppose to help adoption? not to mention that there are a whole bunch of other ribbon controls where you dont have to agree to squat.. i know this is not your fault samantha and probobly everyone at dev div is just as frustrated with this as the rest of us are (at least i hope so) but please improve this..

silverlight is releasing all the Code for their controls and we have to go through this? not cool man.. not releaseing the code is ok, not competing with office is sort of ok i guess (allthough the silverlight ribbon codeplex site has a word re-make as their sample) but not this..

i like the idea of out of band releases because of the agility, but imo the ribbon should be in the toolkit :/
silly* office lawyers..

*cleaned up

Al,

All Ribbon implementations, including third-party ones, require you to agree to the Office UI License. They may not have the facility to force you to click "I Agree" to it before downloading, but the legality is exactly the same.

schildkroete, Thanks for the direct feedback. We've been hearing a lot of these same concerns from developers (especially enterprise developers) and we are working hard to improve our story in this space. We have some great improvements to the designer coming in VS2010. We are also working on more WPF controls, including a NumericUpDown and trying to fill in those gaps that you named, though many of these will come either out of band or after .NET 4.0. However, this is the kind of information we need to improve the platform and create the features you need to be productive. Thanks so much and please keep it coming!

aL3891, Check out the Ribbon V1 Roadmap (http://www.codeplex.com/wpf/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Ribbon%20V1%20Roadmap&referringTitle=WPF%20Ribbon%20Preview) for our current release date. Right now we're targeting mid-2009 for release, most likely with another preview update coming before then.

I hear you on the license (thanks for not blaming me!!) and promise that we are working with Office to try to make this less restrictive in the future. However, as Divelements pointed out (thanks!) third party Ribbons are also subject to the license, so whether you decide to use our Ribbon or one of the great third party controls out there, please make sure you are abiding by the license! The reason that we decided to require you to accept the license before you can download the control is to make sure that our developers are aware of the license and protect you from any legal repercussions. As is the case with the third party Ribbons, it's been hard to make sure that it's clearly communicated that you're subject to this license, so we figured it was safer for everyone to just sign it from the beginning.

SamathaMSFT, thanks for the reply. You know, it is really, really difficult, to convince settled winforms devs to choose Wpf for the current projects UI technology.
The same holds true for EF, instaed of choosing eg NHibernate, leave management/bosses aside, if you need 3rd Party Controls. One question constantly raises: "Why WPF and not Forms?"
However, I won both battles. Now, MS has to be on the move...

Btw, is there any experience concernig performance when running a DB/EF/Wpf application in virtual server environment. ie. clients connect via eg. Xen-Server? Are the any references or resources?
I have not found yet any negative opinion on that.
I am expecting the app to be less resource hungry compared to forms, given that the wpf app does not make use of 3d gimmicks, animation etc...

Based on Office UI guidelines, Ribbon control would not be suitable for traditional MDI/Menubar/Toolbar type windows/forms.

If I, personally, have to push for decision on a WPF app, the least I need is some sort of MDI (aka Visual Studio, SQL Server) interface.

Samantha talked about NumericUpDown to be implemented in .Net 4.0 but what about MDI, is there any consideration given at all?

If yes, I can at least proceed with rest *stuff* with the knowledge that I can plumb MDI whenever that becomes available(within 1 year!!).

Hi maheshkshirsagar,

You're correct - the Office Ribbon UI is targeted towards a very specific scenario, and not generally suited for VS-style MDI applications. Unfortunately we don't have any plans at this time to implement an MDI solution at the framework level. Despite many customer requests, it's not clear that we can provide a very useful general solution at a framework level. There are a number of third party solutions built on top of WPF that are available which might work for your scenario:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/WPFdockinglib.aspx.
http://www.actiprosoftware.com/products/DotNet/WPF/Docking/Default.aspx
http://www.divelements.co.uk/net/controls/sanddockwpf/

You can also use WPF/WinForms interop to host WPF content in the WinForms MDI framework. You can find a walkthrough on this here: http://blogs.msdn.com/nickkramer/archive/2005/07/08/436329.aspx

Thanks,
Samantha

wow i didnt know that all the other ribbon controls also was under the same restrictions as this one.. thats a pretty big caveat on using those :)

if thats the case you are really doing the right thing having people explicitly agreeing on the licence. but the licence it self shouldnt be so strict imo :) but again, i know thats up to the office legal folks, not you guys.. keep poking them about it though :)

it would also be really cool if there could be a more unified silverlight/wpf dev experience.. but getting it out there and even better, getting it into the framework is even more important :)

a channel9 video would be cool too :)

oh, i forgot,
i did look at the roadmap (using the link at the top of this page, maybe there is another one)
but i didnt find any dates in there, thats why i posted :) perhaps those dates could be added or the link updated?

Hi,

I do like the Ribbon, since it helped me getting some practice in designing applications supporting the new input method.

But, i don't know if its just my imagination, but somehow the ribbonpreview looks very blurred to me. Seems like the Ribbon was washed or something ;)

I am concerned--I learned this morning that apps can't be released using the current release of the Ribbon control, and I also learned that the RibbonCommand type is going away in the next version of the control. I have been bothered from the beginning that this control is not part of the WPF toolkit, and that I have to sign a separate license agreement with the Office development group to get it.

So, that means somebody made the .NET development group strip the WPF Ribbon control out of the toolkit and release the CTP under a separate, restrictive license. That can only be the Office development group. It looks to me like Microsoft has become disfunctionally balkanized, with different groups fighting for resources and trying to keep their good stuff within their own group. The only reason I can see for stripping the Ribbon out of the WPF Toolkit is that the Office group tried to kill it, and this is the political settlement that the higher-ups came up with. In other words, it looks like a civil war going on within Microsoft, and the WPF Ribbon control may or may not see general release.

What are the prospects that the WPF Ribbon control will actually see the light of day? The licensing agreement can only be intended to make sure that nothing actually gets produced using the control, which suggests that the Office group is still trying to kill it. This whole fiasco gives me very little confidence that the .NET development group will actually release the control.

I dont think there is a big concern about changes is some structure of the code of the ribbon, that is normal in this step of development, and is clear about RibbonCommand that the intention is make the components more easy and intuitive, and RibbonCommand is somewhat confusing.
About the Licensing im worry as you do. but i hope that MS have the last word in benefits of the developers. The use of Controls like the Ribbon help to improve the Office Products and MS. And the big gap of controls in WPF with .net 3.5

To clarify, we are *definitely* going to release the Ribbon control within the next few months. The reason that the Ribbon CTP is not licensed to ship is because we were concerned about the quality of the control (in terms of bugs and also missing features) and also we knew that we were going to be making the major design change with RibbonCommand, so we didn't want developers to invest too heavily in building an app with the control if they were going to have to make this major change in just a few months.

As far as the Office license restrictions, we appreciate your concerns here and will definitely pass on your comments. We are working to make this arrangement less restrictive in the future, but to set expectations for V1, most likely Ribbon V1 developers will still be subject to the Office Fluent UI license and will have to download the Ribbon separately from the Toolkit at the Office Licensing site.

Samantha, I remember raising the first question about complexity on Oct 28 2008, now it is Mar 11 2009 and things are still the same. Lot of frustrated developers and the same questions about licensing and Ribbon availability... this is very sad as for me... I remember waiting impatiently the *definite* release of Ribbon in October 2008 as well as *definite* release of brand new Xaml/Baml serializer developers applauded for... Have you (MS) thought that by the time Codeplex version of Ribbon control is released the dev community will be already busy working with professionally developed 3rd party Ribbons? We just don't want to spend the valuable time waiting for a carrot, the same goes for our team leads, managers, bosses, etc...
I'm happy I've bought a commercial 3rd party implementation on October 2008 and I don't see any reason why should I take MS one "in a few months"... anyway I took the time to get the existing bits via UI licensing and the Ribbon implementation seems quite poor...
P.S. I did't intend to offend anyone as I do understand that CodePlex team is not responsible for that

Hi Denis, Thank you for your comments. I do understand your frustration, and please be aware that we are as eager to get the Ribbon out as you are. The team that builds the Ribbon (which actually is the same team that moderates this site :-) ) also owns all of WPF Tree Services & Controls, which includes not only Controls, but also Focus, Input, Animations, and a handful of other features. Since we released the Ribbon CTP in October, we have been hard at work on new features and bug fixes for .NET 4.0. (Beta 1 of WPF 4.0 will be available publicly very soon and we encourage everyone to try it out and send us feedback!) Since Ribbon is being shipped out of band, it has been prioritized below the work for the framework release, as that work is tied to a tight schedule (and if we don't do the work now, we won't get the improvements into 4.0). Unfortunately we just don't have enough time in the day to make progress on Ribbon as fast as we (or you) would like. Our best estimate right now is that we should have a V1 version of Ribbon available in mid-2009, likely during the summer. However, this could certainly slip in light of work that comes up for .NET 4.0. We should also have at least one more preview version available prior to that which fixes many of the issues which you're probably referring to in the current CTP.

I know that you all work on software projects also, so I'm sure you understand the position we're in. If our team owned only the Ribbon control, it would likely be done by now, but we've got other important projects that need immediate attention. In the meantime, we do encourage you to use one of the third party controls. The WPF team works closely with many WPF control vendors to ensure that we build features into the platform to improve the quality of third party controls, and there are a number of high-quality third party Ribbon implementations available. Until we can complete Ribbon, we believe that the time we're spending on .NET 4.0 is well worth it and that the majority of developers will benefit more greatly from our platform improvements than they would if we devoted resources to Ribbon at the expense of improvements to the framework. However, I certainly understand your frustration and we will do our best to get this control out as soon as possible. Thank you all for your continued patience and support.

Thanks Samantha. I do understand that the team is completely out of time. Guess you get tones of complains and I'm not the only one. All I can do is to wish good luck to the Ribbon team.
Thanks again for your feedback.

The link to "Office UI Licensing Site" errors out with the message

500 - Internal server error.
There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.

Any alternate link or site?

The link appears to be working ok for me. The friendlier "http://msdn.microsoft.com/officeui" which we have above forwards to this link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa973809.aspx. Can you see if that one works for you?

Any clue when we will see another release of the WPF Ribbon?

i just want to say that i'm very pleased with the control so far, and these whiners need to learn to shut up and deal! nobody likes license agreements, but they're a part of life. beyond the few apparent site problems experienced by some, the process that I saw was fairly painless. good work on the Ribbon control and good work on the framework in general. you guys are awesome. keep it up!

@lkempe - We are hoping to ship a second CTP in late summer which includes the RibbonCommand design change. (Our planned schedule has slipped somewhat in light of our commitments for .NET 4.0, and please be advised that it is possible that this schedule will slip again.)

@burton - Thanks!!

I am waiting NET 4.0 only because of Ribbon control. I tried CTP version. Do you plan keytip feature (when press Alt)?

Hi daVinci, the Ribbon actually will not be shipping with .NET 4.0 - it will be out of band, available through the Office Licensing Site just like the CTP, and will actually be available before .NET 4.0. Yes, we do plan on including the KeyTip feature in V1. Thanks!

I installed VS 2010 Beta 1 and tried migrating a project that i was working in 2008 that made use of the Ribbon. Unfortunately, the project does not build. The error shown is could not load file or assembly...
When I tried deleting and adding the Ribbon controls to toolbox RibbonControlLibrary.dll, I realized that unless the dll was added to GAC it kept giving me this error and would not allow me to add the controls. I added the dll to GAC and am referring it in my project. However, when I try to run the application it throws another error saying that "this assembly is not vetted for safe use by partial trust applications and hence should not be added to GAC.
I also tried giving full trust to this assembly but with not luck.

Would you be able to comment on compatibility issues of the Ribbon with VS 2010 Beta 1?

Is there any Roadmap that reflects future releases (CTPs and so on) of the Ribbon?

Hmm, that's odd. I used the Ribbon in my 4.0 demos at TechEd last week without a problem... Can you try making a new .NET 4.0 and including the RibbonControlsLibrary.dll and see if it works? When I created my demos, it did it from a new application instead of migrating a 3.5 app, so perhaps there might be a bug in VS's migration. You definitely should not GAC Ribbon, as it could create conflicts when we update the assembly in the future. This scenario should be supported without GAC'ing, so if you're encountering problems, there's definitely a bug somewhere that we need to fix.

Hi AugustoRuiz, we haven't released an official schedule yet since the Ribbon work is highly dependent on the .NET 4.0 schedule which is still in flux. Right now our current goals are to release a CTP2 with the RibbonCommand design change at the end of the summer and to release V1 at the end of this year or beginning of next year. Again, these dates are low-confidence as Ribbon has been prioritized below the rest of our work for .NET 4.0 (since Ribbon is shipping out of band, it has more flexibility in the schedule than our WPF v4 work does and so we've had to address the .NET 4.0 work items before Ribbon). Thank you to everyone for your continued patience and support - we will release an update and more solid dates as soon as we can.

I did a fresh install of VS on a Windows 7 machine, started a new project and tried adding the Ribbon Controls to the Toolbox. I am still getting the same error message -
Could not load file of assembly 'path to RibbonControlLibrary.dll' or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exeception From HRESULT: 0x80131515)

I also tried, just adding a reference to the project and trying to build the app... No issue while adding the reference but building application still throws the same error.

When you do release the ribbon, will you be changing it to the Scenic Ribbon that is part of Windows 7. That way we can dispense with the Fluent Ribbon licensing?

tejas15 and SamanthaMSFT -

I also came across this issue. I managed to solve it by right clicking RibbonControlsLibrary.dll and selecting Properties. At the bottom of the General tab is a Security warning that 'this file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer.' Clicking Unblock and OK then rebuilding solved the issue.

Hope that helped,
Matt.

@mattduffin - Thanks! tejas, let me know if this solves your problem.

@javelinBCD - The Scenic Ribbon is a written for a different platform than the WPF Ribbon and unfortunately our control does not fall under the same licensing requirements as Scenic, so the current plan of record is to continue to be licensed under the Office Fluent UI License in V1. This is similar to our third Ribbon platform, the MFC Ribbon, which is also licensed under the Fluent UI License. That being said, we are still working on finding an alternative licensing scheme if at all possible, so this may change between now and V1.

I'm a bit confused from all of this. What's the current situation with Microsoft's offer of Ribbon controls to the various platforms?
We're starting a new project at work. Most of us are experienced WinForms developers, But we'd like to start thinking about getting familiar with WPF. One of the requirements for that project is a Ribbon-like interface. So the first thing im trying to find out, of course, is in-house support for that requirement.

Is there an article/blog post/any kind of post detailing the current state of things for either WPF/WinForms?

V1 at the end of this year or next.... This is almost killing me as last time I checked this, it was still this summer.
I've urged the adoption of Microsoft WPF Ribbon over several of our major projects instead of any 3rd party vendors, even on the fact that our company has purchased plenty of licences for 3rd control suites. And even one day it does get released, the major design change could make me suffer a lot.
I'm just wondering whether Microsoft is building these WPF controls for fun? Or it is just that I expected too much from the company...
Seriously, please, put a big band on top of site says "Don't put this into anything other than personal entertainment", from the very start day of such projects that don't have any committed delivery date but have preview versions showing off. Thanks.

(I am extremely biased on this topic because I work for a third-party control developer.)

I am curious as to why one would assume that a reusable control offering from Microsoft would be better than a third-party offering. Quite apart from the fact that third-party control developers do this, and nothing but this, for a living, I cannot think of a single instance in the past where a complex reusable control from Microsoft was better than the third-party alternatives.

I don't want to sound like I am putting Microsoft down here - their offerings are usually very stable and provide basic fulfilment of their requirement very well indeed - but other, third-party-provided controls (and certainly not just from the company I work for!) almost always do it better and more comprehensively. They also have the advantage of being smaller, more agile companies that are quicker to pick up new features and fix the occasional bug. Again, this is not a reflection on Microsoft: I have met with some of the team implementing Microsoft's WPF Ribbon and they are fine folks. There's a space in the market for both.

The last poster indicated he had urged adoption of the Microsoft WPF Ribbon on some large projects. This was probably unwise as presumably at the time, the eventual features of the Microsoft product had not even been specified (they've changed a few times over the course of its development). Additionally, from preview to beta to release the commanding model has completely changed such that when the next release appears, every current consumer will need to change his or her application to accommodate it.

Preview versions are just that: for preview only.

Agree with you, and in fact, I'm not looking for the best Ribbon on earth. We just need a basic one that can achieve common behaviors. Microsoft can cut feature as they want, we only desire a decent quality.
The reason I intended to pick Microsoft instead of the 3rd party was obviously for cost consideration. 3rd party charges on a per developer basis, and major projects involve many developers, even more in the future. That's why we hoped to reduce 3rd party dependency.

For those of you looking to use a MSFT Ribbon and don't mind a little C++ & MFC programming, I would suggest checking out the MFC Ribbon. We had a project where we used C++ and MFC for the main shell of the application and wrote all the views and business logic in WPF & C#. The new MFC stuff is pretty slick and easy to use (and there's the added benefit that there's a TON of documentation on the web for MFC if you haven't used it before). And where C++ and MFC fall short or are too tedious, just use WPF. For example, we used the WPF Grid quite a bit and had no problems integrating it with MFC views. The C++/CLI In Action book is pretty good if you need a quick primer on how to integrate the C++ and WPF.

This project (WPF Ribbon) is not open source, please remove it from codeplex and keep it at Microsoft.com, it gives the developers the illusion that they can download it and modify it to fit their needs, when in reality, it is just a closed source dll

Notice that the WPF Ribbon assemblies are not posted on this site for just that reason - this page is just a link to the location where you can download the control. We will not be removing the links since many of the developers using the WPF Toolkit also want to use the Ribbon and this makes it easier for everyone to find what they need. Also, note that none of the controls and features on this site are Open Source. As explained on the homepage, WPF Codeplex is part of the Shared Source Initiative. See this wiki page for more information: http://wpf.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Shared%20Source

Samantha, you say, "Also, note that none of the controls and features on this site are Open Source. As explained on the homepage, WPF Codeplex is part of the Shared Source Initiative." But the problem is CodePlex's documentation says (http://codeplex.codeplex.com/), "CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting web site." Ribbon isn't open source so it shouldn't be here in any form, even as an advertisement. As many other people have said, Microsoft has plenty of more appropriate places for such content.

Hello Samantha,
you wrote in an answer to a question at the beginning of this year that there will be a Gallery control in V1 of Ribbon. Do you already know a date for the release of V1?
Regards
Carsten

Hi Carsten,
Yes, Gallery is still planned for V1. We are currently aiming to release V1 at the end of this year or early 2010.
Thanks,
Samantha

Hello Samantha,
you wrote earlier about a preview version of V1. When will that preview-version be available?
I want to start developing a program with a ribbon ui, but the change with IRibbonCommand stops me from starting right now...

Regards Gerrit

I believe I read somewhere from Jaime Rodriguez that another preview will be released between VS2010 Beta 2 and RTM. Hopefully between August and November, but don't know. I would love to see a narrowed timeframe, as well.

Will it be possible to implement the new Backstage feature that's appearing in Office 2010 for our own applications using the WPF Ribbon control, or will that be prevented by either technical limitations or licensing?

There are no technical limitations which would prevent you from achieving this, but note that we will not have this feature implemented out of the box, so you'll have to do a little work to achieve it (Ribbon V1 will be targeting the Office 2007 look and feel and the Office Fluent UI license for that version and we will likely release a service pack later with an update for the Office 2010 look and license). I can't comment on the licensing aspect, since I don't believe that Office has released the new Fluent UI license for Office 2010 yet, but I suspect that this will likely be allowed under the updated license agreement.

Thanks Samantha. I'll watch for further developments.

Hi. I have followed the online form through on https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/wizard.aspx?wizid=5fed1051-2e7b-4049-8177-0fdaae5f475c&lcid=1033 and filled in all required fields. Whenever I click submit the next page is "Page Cannot Be Dispalyed", this also happens on my home pc and one of my colleagues so this seems a problem with the Microsoft Site. How do I get the Ribbon UI for testing now...?

Thanks.

(Correction) - Following on from my previous comment the message is "Page Cannot Be Found" from the following URL http://microsoftio.partnersalesresources.com/officeUI/license/

I am hitting the same problem - there must be a temporary outage of the Office UI website. Unfortunately my team does not have control over that site, so I'm not sure when it will be back up, but I will attempt to contact the owners to let them know. Thank you for reporting this!

Samantha: Do you have any idea when a refresh of the ribbon will be published? I want to start a new dev based on MVVM and actually, I need ICommand ;-)

I am still receiving the "Page Cannot Be Found" error. Any suggestions? Has someone posted this problem to microsoft?

@c2iRichardClark - we are shooting to release the CTP2 around the end of this summer (August/September). That release will include the RibbonCommand design change and enable you to create an MVVM-compatible Ribbon application.

@jdmschwartz - I spoke to the Office Licensing team about this and this is what they had to say: "Yes, unfortunately our web site hosting group has reorganized some of the sites and pages on the backend and unfortunately our ribbon UI licensing pages got disconnected. They are working to remedy the situation and we hope to have the pages back up very soon." I will post back here as soon as I hear that the page is back up. I apologize for the delay.

Any idea when Ribbon Control for WPF will be released for production use? We like its many features, but not sure if this is the right time to jump in.

If you haven't started yet, I would wait for the CTP2 before you jump in. That release will not be licensed for production use, but it will be a lot closer to V1 than the current preview bits, so it won't be wasted effort if you start investing in development on the CTP2. We don't have a date set for release of V1 yet, but it should be ready at least by the time .NET 4.0 and VS 2010 are released, and hopefully before then. Thanks!

Hi, just wanted to let everyone know that the Ribbon Licensing download page is back up. You should be able to access Ribbon using the instructions above. Thanks for your patience!

Is there anyway to programmatically control the collapsing of ribbontabs, similar to when a user double-clicks and the tab minimizes itself? -Fariaz

Yes, you can set the IsMinimized property to True to cause the Ribbon to minimize and just show the tabs.

I can't wait for the RibbonCommand change in CTP2. I'm having a fair bit of trouble figuring how to handle events in the current form in powershell. Will you be offering tips and small tutorials on how to implement this with powershell? I think with reaching RTM, I think powershell will gain considerable grounds with admins and enthusiasts. It would be nice to see more documentation and examples with powershell utilizing wpf. It not exactly black and white for people who recently dove into powershell.

Hi foureight84, we don't currently have plans to release any examples of Ribbon using Powershell, but I can certainly suggest this to the team. Thanks for the suggestion!

Dear 'Owners' of the ribbon control,
I have seen plenty of controls at codeplex that were released as Pre-Alpha that have been much more usable than this Ribbon 'CTP'.
I'm wondering that microsoft is 'releasing' such a buggy and absolutely hard to use control to the community.
I've tried now for 2 weeks to use the ribbon in my app, with the success that i nearly kicked my laptop out of the window because of all the designer crashes aso ..
I always thought MS has a high quality standard, this thought seems to leave me right now...
Help me, am i the only one who is frustrated about the Ribboncontrol ? What am i doing wrong ?

My thoughts are just wait a couple of months until they release CTP2 ( Probably end of Sept09 ). This should have many bug fixes and be a closer feel of what is expected in V1. I feel your pain and don't understand the bugs and wait on this control, but that is what we get when using beta bits. My hope is... when the development cycle of VS2010 and .NET 4.0 is over, there will be much love for WPF controls in this toolkit similar to Silverlight. Hang in there.

Hi, I just wanted to know if there is any way of programmatically changing the active tab in the Ribbon? Also is there a tab changed event? Thanks.

Hi si0,
Try this:
this.ribbon.SelectedTab = this.ribbon.Tabs[0];

Read this yesterday. Good update on Ribbon.
http://www.uxpassion.com/2009/08/wpf-ribbon-control-roadmap-and-look-into-the-future/

@ Gritcsenko. Thanks a lot, that worked great!

Is there a way to have my own controls in the RibbonGroup?

Any news? We are very waiting new CTP...

Can't wait more for the new CTP! please update it!

@lkempe & samantha: me too ;-)

Me too! =)

Me too! :-)

End of September is near... =)

Silence before the storm...? :)

Read this on Soma's blog....

"The new WPF Ribbon Control will be released out of band around the same time as WPF 4 through the Office UI Licensing site. You can find instructions on downloading the WPF Ribbon (currently in Preview) here. The WPF Ribbon will feature skins for Windows 7 and Office and all the standard Ribbon features that users are familiar with, including tabs and groups, dynamic resizing, quick access toolbar, application menu, contextual tabs, key tips, and more! The Ribbon will remain available as a separate, standalone assembly."

This is concurrent to what Samantha has been posting. I hope to see new CPT around VS10 B2 in a couple of weeks. Please, Please:)

"The Ribbon control will work with .NET 3.5 and all later releases."
That's a shame, because my application is targeting .NET 3.0 (to support Vista out-of-the-box). I would love to use the Ribbon but it does not support .NET 3.0.
If possible, please back-port the Ribbon to .NET 3.0. All other third-party WPF ribbons support .NET 3.0, so why not this one?

This all seems to be a tempest in a teapot anyway, as I can't get the darn thing to work. I can only get an "Unable to create object...." error which no one responds to when I post it. I have found several other postings of the same error, and nobody has had anything at all helpful to say.

I found a thread that indicated that perhaps 3.5.31016.1 was not the latest release, but when I went to get another copy it turned out to be the same anyway. Anybody know of a more recent version?

Any News? .Net Framwork Beta 2 is out.

+1, whats going on here really?

Wonder, that Samantha is so silent. As VS 2010 B2 is out, it would be fair to hear something about WPF Ribbon Control.

+1, I agree, It would be courteous to inform us. CTP1 exists more than year and no news... no CTP2...

ScottGu just released a WPF 4 update blog. Does not say specifics, but just coming soon. Maybe PDC09???

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/10/26/wpf-4-vs-2010-and-net-4-0-series.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

@shaggy Thanks for sharing the link.

After reading that blog post I got the feeling that there will be no updated ribbon until .NET 4.0 is released, which is late march 2010 at the earliest?
If that is really the case, then at least let us know!

Is there any forum where we can actually discuss development with this Ribbon? I have a couple of doubts that surely someone else had and am trying to talk about them (not being able to update the title of the ribbon during other than the first time - I am sure this is a bug because the title in the task bar is updated, only not in the title of the ribbon - and when maximizing it uses only full screen)

@rguim Use the discussions page: http://wpf.codeplex.com/Thread/List.aspx?SearchText=ribbon

Does this preview support mini-toolbars?

Example: https://knowledge.riverdale.edu/images/3/30/Word_mini_toolbar.png

It doesn't even support keyboard accelerators yet. Totally unusable in production apps.

I have found out a couple of things to watch out for when using the Ribbon controls under WS 2010 Beta. Please see my blog at http://programount.blogspot.com/2009/11/ribboncontrols-and-visual-studio-2010.html

Note: The tan00001 link doesn't have any news--it's about making the old CTP work with VS 2010 B2