DotNetBar provides an extensive suite of mostly Microsoft-inspired user
interface components for your .NET applications at a single reasonable price. Of particular
note is the first and still at this point the best third-party implementation that I've seen of the Office 2007 "Ribbon"
user interface. DotNetBar lets you build a user interface that closely
mimics the newer Office 2007 applications, complete with tabs, chunks,
variable-sized items, supersized tooltips, visual effects on mouseover, shortcut
key hints when you press the Alt key, dropdown galleries, the
Office button and Quick Access Toolbar, space management when the screen isn't
wide enough, and so on. DotNetBar implemented this when the first Office 12 betas came out of the gate, and they've been refining and keeping up with Microsoft's changes
ever since. The current implementation (I looked at a stable beta of DotNetBar 6.2,
as customers have access to pre-release code) includes the standard Office color
schemes as well as easy editing for your own custom schemes, animated gallery scrolling,
and Office 2007 styled ProgressBar and MessageBox implementations.
If you don't want to be quite that far on the bleeding edge, you'll find
plenty else in this suite, including:
- Dockable windows that support auto-hide and the VS2005-style "diamond"
hints for easy drag-and-drop rearrangement
- Menus and toolbars with support for a variety of looks and themes
- Explorer bar
- Tabstrip
- A modern splitter bar
- A collapsible panel with very flexible styling options
- A balloon help control that also supports "toast"
- The BubbleBar, which resembles the Mac Dock
- Outlook style navigation panes
- Item panel, which resembles the extended dropdowns in Office 2007
Whether you prefer Money, Outlook, Visual Studio, or Office 2007, you can
probably emulate the Microsoft application of your choice with the controls
included here. The design time experience is very good; even
building a user interface as complex
as Office 2007 is largely performed visually in the designer, with the property sheet being an aid to setting some of the hundreds of properties that allow tweaking
things.The API-level help is good, although the actual user manual level help is
a bit sketchy. This is made up for to a large extent by the extensive set of samples (in
both C# and VB) and the video tutorials available online, which are the best
way to get up and running with the product quickly. You can download a
trial version, and for an extra $55 you can get the full C# source code along
with the controls. Redistribution is royalty-free.
If you're trying to keep up with the Joneses in your .NET application user
interfaces, DotNetBar should set you up nicely.