BCGControlBar Library .NET Edition is written in C++/CLI and can be used with Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 or higher. The library contains a number of highly customizable, fully designable components that will allow you creation of powerful user interface.
Features
Visual Managers
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You can use six visual styles: Office XP, Office 2003, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Office 2007, Carbon. Office 2007 has four visual themes: Luna Blue, Obsidian Black, Aqua and Silver.
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Visual managers are separated from controls and placed at the root of hierarchy.
Ribbon Control
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General Ribbon features:
- Smart layout - each ribbon element may have three states - Large, Intermediate, Small
- Customizable Quick access Toolbar (QAT) allows to add most usable commands, or commands that are not present in Ribbon
- Collapsible panels.
- "Tab elements" - a set of buttons located next to the Category tabs.
- Customization (Options) dialog is designed to allow insertion of custom (defined at the application level) forms.
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Ribbon panels may host any kind of ribbon element. Out of the box elements:
- Regular buttons
- Menu buttons
- Split menu buttons (menu buttons with default command)
- Combo box (combo box's drop down works in gallery menu mode)
- Edit box
- In-Ribbon and popup gallery controls
- Color picker
- Track bar
- Button groups. A button group may contain all the above elements.
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Contextual categories
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Floaty (context toolbar)
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Galleries
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Launch button
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Customizable status bar control.
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Key tips
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Application (Main) button
Toolbars and menus
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Full, Quick and Alternative customization.
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Built-in "Customize" dialog
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"Pager" buttons
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Drop-down palettes
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Edit box and combo box buttons
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Owner draw buttons
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Extendable architecture enables you easily create custom button types
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Support for "Item lists". Item list is an automatically expanded menu item which is present as a single item in customize mode or design time (like list of Windows in MDI application).
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Command-oriented design. You can assign a single command to several toolbar and menu buttons. You can manage command properties via properties of selected button and get all related toolbar and menu items updated at once. At the same time you can customize appearance of individual buttons.
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Support for idle processing. You can process events fired for each button at idle time and immediately update button state.
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ExecuteCommand event (an event sent by the framework when user clicks a button) can be handled either for each button (command) individually, or in one central place.
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Built-in support for "Toolbars" menu
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Ability to customize popup menus on the fly
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Scrollable menus
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Support for "rarely used" commands.
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Automatic generation of "disabled" images
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Persistent state
Docking control bars
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"Smart" (VS 2005 -like) and "Standard" (VS .NET 2003) docking.
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Nested docking
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Auto hide bars
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Tabbed groups
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Built-in support for 'Window Position" menu (Floating, Dockable, Tabbed Document, Auto Hide, Hide options)
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Close, Pin and Window Position buttons can be added and removed at runtime. Support for custom caption buttons
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Accurate state (dockable-floating-auto hide) transition
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Support for Tabbed Documents (for applications with MDI Tabs only)
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Borders around docking control are properly drawn by the framework for each visual style. At the same time you can customize border size for individual controls
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Customizable caption height (in docked and auto hide state)
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Persistent state
MDI Tabs
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MDI Forms are automatically added to MDI Tab group.
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Multiple tab containers divided by splitters (not implemented in the first release)
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Automatic integration with "Windows" menu
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Built-in context menu, which can be customized on the fly.
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MDI Tab groups can be customized at design time and at runtime via a separate component MDITabsOptions. You can change MDI Tab group appearance, tab layout and tab alignment.
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It's possible to display two icons (right and left of the text) for each MDI Tab.
Tab Control
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Fully designable "tab strip" and "tab" controls
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Several layout types (Fixed, Compressed, Auto Size and more)
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Horizontal and vertical alignments
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Various visual styles (including Excel, VS 2005, One Note)
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Support for custom color themes
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Tab Strip control can be "detached" from control area. Each tab item has a property "RelatedControl", but it's not necessary to set this property. In this way you can perform any actions just responding to SelectedTabItemChanged event.
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It's possible to set two images (right and left) to a tab item.
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TabDrawManager is separated from Visual Managers. You can provide your own drawing algorithms and still use standard color themes.
Grid Control
Please refer Grid Control topic for the list of features.
Property List Control
Calendar Bar Control
Toolbox Control
Outlook Control
Color Picker Control
Advanced ToolTip Control
Split Container Control
Localization support
