Custom Ribbon Layout

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 2, 2011 at 4:55am

Hi Danny,

 

sadly no. The custom Ribbon Layout editor doesn't allow you to restrict icons to the dropdown list only. All of the ones you mentioned exist only on dropdowns.

 

I ignored this problem when it first arose because I wasn't sure what the best way to solve it would be. Now I think it's a mistake to even allow icons to be only on dropdowns, it causes confusion everywhere. It's probably much better to only have dropdown 'hints', but to always require an icon is part of one of the 7 sections on each panel.

 

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David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on August 2, 2011 at 5:00am

I keep running into this, forgetting that I have all icons shown!

 

Can you set a president for higher number panels to disappear first when restricting space.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 2, 2011 at 6:02am

President?

 

Are we talking about the ribbon layout editor now or the ribbon itself?

 

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David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on August 2, 2011 at 6:24am

oops dyslexia kicking in: precedence

 

Talking about the actual ribbon now. At the moment if you have show all icons activated then each panel looses some of their icons, where as what I'm trying to propose is if the dropdown items were say in panel 7 then none of 7 would appear until there was sufficient space.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 2, 2011 at 7:06am

I suppose this is possible to a degree. I always need to hide all the icons in a specific column, so I can try and find all columns containing only dropdown icons and collapse those first. But when they are interspersed with regular icons, I either need to find two icons in one panel, and remove them both, which cause all icons in between those two to change row (or more than two if the ribbon is higher than that).

 

It's probably not that important that icons vanish in a predictable fashion while the window is resized, but it is important icons always appear in the same row. I'll run some tests, see what it feels like this way.

 

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David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on August 2, 2011 at 7:18am

Going back to the original question. In the image above all of the domain Icons are present even though half are dropdown only.

 

I find it easier to trash icons than add them so it would be good if they were all present at the start.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 2, 2011 at 7:35am

Here's how it works, you can assign an 'Exposure' to a certain icon. There's Primary to Septenary to indicate in which area of a panel it ends up. Then there's Hidden to indicate the icon shouldn't appear on the ribbon at all (I use this one whenever a component is replaced by a better version, the old component sticks around in case you open old files that use it). Finally you can assign DropDown as well. Normally you'd say Primary+DropDown, to indicate the icon belongs in the first group but it only visible on the dropdown panel. However, if only DropDown is assigned, then we run into problems.

 

I just decided to remove this particular option and use a property called Obscure instead. It is no longer allowed to use Obscure on its own, it has to be combined with a valid group. 

 

I will also make sure that all icons marked Obscure will be stashed along the right side edge of any collection, so it's more likely that obscure icons will form complete columns. I will keep the 'Show All Component' option, although it will now be called 'Hide Obscure Components'.

 

Not sure yet if and how Obscure will be exposed on the Ribbon Layout Editor, but at least no icons will go missing anymore.

 

--

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on August 2, 2011 at 7:42am

Look forward to testing this out