Office 2007 Style Ribbon Menu

[Goodog]

Hi Guys

One thing I forgot to mention is that, if you are making MM4 much more windows 7 native as it were, it would be very cool if you could incorporate a 'ribbon' menu a la Office 2007, AutoCad 2009 and others. When this menu system was introduced, it seemed very strange but I have to say that since using it for a good while, it is far superior to the curent standard windows style menu system.

Anyway, that would also be on my wishlist.

Thanks and best regards

Goodog

[Goodog]

Hi Guys

To better illustrate what I was trying to say, please have a look at the screenshot attached. It's from an app called Music Label 2010 which in itself isn't very good but I think this has an excellent interface, very clean and uncluttered and that's how I would like MM4 to look if it's possible. What do you think guys.



Best Regards

Goodog

[Shiny Rabbit]

that looks like a nice interface, I support this, I'm not sure how much trouble implementing that kind of layout this would be though

[DeathAxe]

Cool to see that request, as I just wanted to add the same one.

I am using MediaMonkey with Windows 7 and a 24'' FullHD-Display and must confess: The 16x16pixel Buttons are slightly hard to find on the huge screen and I never remember which meaning an icon has. So I always need to wait for the tooltip, what is slighly annoying. To search the menues all the time is terrible, too. It would be nice to have all functions grouped logically in a kind of ribbon or larger toolbar. Maybe one could add capitons to the most required buttons or better make there size and icons fully customizable. The Ribbon itself causes the need to ask Microsoft to allow its use but is quite easy to implement with Delphi/C++Builder (from your binaries I can read you use one of those IDEs). Adding support for the skinning engine might be tricky, I think.

But nevertheless, please think about changing your GUI as it would make MediaMonkey even more powerful and easy to use, I think.

Thanks

[Melloware]

Since MediaMonkey is written in Delphi here are native VCL Ribbon control framework for Delphi...

http://www.devexpress.com/products/VCL/Exbars/

[Lowlander]

I hate the ribbon layout.

My issues are size, the implementations and above mockup show that it uses a lot of space. The second issue is that the ribbon thinks it knows what it wants. It generally is wrong.

I do agree that it tends to look nice, but one has to wonder how this works out with the flexibility MediaMonkey currently has to put the different toolbars in different places.

[Melloware]

Agreed it might not be the right layout for MM but I thought I would mention the library since a few threads had been started about this. I personally love MM's interface and default skin but then again I am not using it on a huge flat screen TV just on my monitor.

[DeathAxe]

Hello guys,

Ribbon Control is introduced with RAD Studio 2009 as a "default" package. It needs certain licensing by Microsoft to be used, but CodeGear did a very good job to implement it into the well known TActionBar stuff. Having a Ribbon Control as the main toolbar, would not mean to loose all other toolbars. It is still possible to use customization dialogs to move buttons to other toolbars if wanted as long as all functions are cleanly implemented as TActions.

The only task of the ribbon is to remove the whole Menu shit. Using MM on a 24'' FullHD screen makes it terrible difficult to hit the small 16x16 icons of the toolbar. The only more or less huge problem I can see with implementing Ribbon Control ist skinning. I think it is hard to enable ribbon to use MM's skinning engine easily.

I am using Office 2007 and must say, after a period of some "getting used to" I am convinced of Ribbon's efficency. As MM has tons of functions, Ribbon Control would be just the right thing to improve the ease of use. Therefore I strongly whish a ribbon like toolbar system. One might also use a kind of skinned tab control or so.

Regards

[Noruen]

I'm just wondering why there was a discussion about Office ribbon-like UI few years ago but it suddenly fell silent.

So is there any plan to add ribbon-like UI in next version(s) of MM? I believe it would be very beneficial for great program with so many functions. I think current skin engine is outdated and I have also problems with very small icons on my monitor.

Thank you for any response.

[Lowlander]

Let's hope not, waste of space while hiding options. Fully customizable/lockable toolbars would be much better.