Ribbon in WinForms C# .Net 4.0

Question

Does Microsoft have ribbon control for non-Office applications? If not is there any that are available for free?

I like that component and would like to use it my WinForm 4.0 application.

Answer 1

The one mentioned on CodePlex was a good first effort but there's been no release since 2009 and it doesn't offer much functionality.

There's a complete package available on CodePlex that's active and full featured. You can get it here.

This is a .NET wrapper around the Windows 7 Ribbon Control and while it does require the Windows SDK to compile, it works great for WinForms apps that want to incorporate a ribbon without incurring the overhead cost of a commercial product.

Answer 2

Microsoft makes one for WPF that you can download here.

There is one on Codeplex that should work for traditional WinForms (open source).

Answer 3

Microsoft have made a bit of a mess of providing a Ribbon control. Initially it had some very complex licence conditions, these may be relaxed now but the control is not as easily available as some of their recent NuGet deployed goodies.

There seem to be more options in the WPF area if that helps:

1. WPF - Microsoft Ribbon for WPF October 2010, this replacesWPF Ribbon Preview
2. New .NET 4.5 WPF Ribbon - RC but at least it is in the framework
3. Fluent Ribbon Control Suite

In general, WinForms seems to be a dead-end and I wouldn't expect to see Microsoft invest too much in it but libraries/examples do exist:

1. Commercial library: ComponentOne Ribbon
2. Commercial library: Infragistics WinToolbars
3. Blog about using the Microsoft Windows 7 SDK ribbon
4. CodeProject article
5. CodeProject post using the Windows 7 SDK