25.3. Ribbons

At this point, you might be feeling that the WPF toolbars are just a bit underwhelming. Other than two built-in features—a basic overflow menu and the ability to be rearranged by the user—they don't provide any modern frills. Even the Windows Forms toolkit has a feature that allows users to drag and dock toolbars to different places in a window.

The reason that toolbars haven't evolved since the first version of WPF is simple: they're a dying trend. Although toolbars are still relatively popular at the moment, the shift is to smarter tab-based controls, such as the ribbon that debuted in Office 2007 and now graces Windows 7 and Office 2010.

With the ribbon, Microsoft found itself faced with a familiar dilemma. To improve the productivity ...

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