Using BackstageView of KetticRibbonBar in C#.NET

The BackstageView of KetticRibbonBar is used to replace the Application Menu for Office 2010. The backstage view is actually a menu that has buttons and tabs to cover the entire window. It provides fully customizable backstage view support and the tab of the backstage view allows the users to populate any type of controls in the content area.

Because the backstage view is a replacement of the Application Men in Office 2010, we can just set the ApplicationMenuStyle property to BackstageView to enable the view mode using the C# code below.

ketticRibbonBar1.ApplicationMenuStyle = Kettic.WinForms.UI.ApplicationMenuStyle.BackstageView;

At design time, while building the backstage view mode, we can add BackstageButtonItem and BackstageTabItem to the left panel in the backstage view mode. The BackstageButtonItem is used to add a standard button and the BackstageTabItem allows the designers to drag and drop controls. To add the two items to the backstage view mode at design time, the users can use one of the options, Smart Tag, KetticItem Collection Editor, as well as the context menu.

At runtime, KetticRibbonBar control allows the users add all controls and KetticItems, including the BackstageButtonItem and BackstageTabItem, to the backstage view. This is achieved by using the Items collection. The following C# code demonstrates how to add items to the backstage view mode.

ketticRibbonBarBackstageView1.Items.Add(new BackstageButtonItem("KetticButtonItem"));
ketticRibbonBarBackstageView1.Items.Add(new KetticButtonElement("KetticButtonElement"));
ketticRibbonBarBackstageView1.Items.Add(new KetticDropDownListElement());

KetticRibbonBar .NET component is capable of adding controls to backstage view pages and arranging any type of controls. The following steps show how to achieve this.