Make Ribbon ContextualTabGroups Show When Ribbon Is Minimized

Question

The following is the scenario:

When the ribbon is not minimized, showing a tab linked to a RibbonContextualTabGroup works fine, as visible in the following screenshot.

When the ribbon is minimized, showing a tab linked to a RibbonContextualTabGroup shows the tabs, but not the contextual tab group header, as visible in the following screenshot.

If the ribbon is minimized, but the popup is open, showing a tab linked to a RibbonContextualTabGroup works fine, as visible in the following screenshot. (The popup is not visible, but that is how I created the scenario.)

WebMatrix also has this problem, so I am assuming that Microsoft developers intentionally coded in this functionality. In Windows 8/Office 2013, however, the contextual tab groups always show, regardless of the state of the ribbon.

I am using the .NET 4.0 RibbonControlsLibrary from Microsoft, so I have access to the full source code. How can I modify the code to force the contextual tab groups to always show, regardless of the state of the ribbon?

Answer 1

Yes, really good, thank you very much, Ming!

Is there a way to use RibbonContextualTabGroupItemsControl.cs without copying and overriding all relating ribbon-source-classes?

I followed again the approach overriding the ribbon style to avoid this extensive work and was finally successful

There is a trigger that handles the IsMinimized-property of the ribbon:

<Trigger Property="IsMinimized" Value="True">
    <Setter Property="Content" TargetName="mainItemsPresenterHost" Value="{x:Null}"/>
    <Setter Property="Visibility" TargetName="mainItemsPresenterHost" Value="Collapsed"/>
    <Setter Property="Content" TargetName="popupItemsPresenterHost" Value="{Binding ElementName=groupsBorder}"/>
    <Setter Property="BorderThickness" TargetName="BackgroundBorder" Value="0,0,0,1"/>
</Trigger>

The content of mainItemsPresenterHost-control is a border named 'groupsBorder' that contains all ribbon tabs. When the IsMinimized-property changes to true, this border is moved to the popup presenter named 'popupItemsPresenterHost'.

An other trigger handles the IsDropDownOpen-property:

<Trigger Property="IsDropDownOpen" Value="True">
    <Setter Property="BorderThickness" TargetName="BackgroundBorder" Value="0"/>
/Trigger>

I changed both trigger as follows:

<Trigger Property="IsMinimized" Value="True">
    <!--<Setter Property="Content" TargetName="mainItemsPresenterHost" Value="{x:Null}"/>-->
    <!--<Setter Property="Visibility" TargetName="mainItemsPresenterHost" Value="Collapsed"/>-->
    <Setter Property="Height" TargetName="mainItemsPresenterHost" Value="0"/>
    <!--<Setter Property="Content" TargetName="popupItemsPresenterHost" Value="{Binding ElementName=groupsBorder}"/>-->
    <Setter Property="BorderThickness" TargetName="BackgroundBorder" Value="0,0,0,1"/>
</Trigger>

<Trigger Property="IsDropDownOpen" Value="True">
    <Setter Property="BorderThickness" TargetName="BackgroundBorder" Value="0,0,0,1"/>
    <Setter Property="Content" TargetName="mainItemsPresenterHost" Value="{x:Null}"/>
    <Setter Property="Content" TargetName="popupItemsPresenterHost" Value="{Binding ElementName=groupsBorder}"/>
</Trigger>

Note that i have replaced the setter of the Visibility-property of the mainItemsPresenterHost-control with the Height-property and set it to '0'.