Shorter Ribbon?

[MichaelWDenney]

Simple question. Is the height of the ribbon modifiable at all? I don't mean dynamically. I mean can different applications have shorter/taller ribbons or is the ribbon a fixed size?

[kirill-grouchnikov]

The ribbon is as tall as it needs to be to fit all the content. See:

• BasicRibbonUI.RibbonLayout.preferredLayoutSize that accounts for task toggle buttons and the tasks
• BasicRibbonBandUI.RibbonBandLayout.preferredLayoutSize that accounts for the band title and the control panel
• BasicBandControlPanelUI.ControlPanelLayout that accounts for the height of a single button in the BIG presentation state - which is the base height for the control panels.

There is no configuration here, as the ribbon's primary and intended layout is to support command buttons in either BIG state as full height, or MEDIUM / SMALL states in three rows. That is reflected in ribbon galleries as well. Flow ribbon bands that go into 1, 2 or 3 rows are a secondary configuration.

In theory, it can be considered that a ribbon with only flow ribbon bands can be shorter - just 1 or 2 lines, instead of full 3. However, that ignores the support for horizontal resizing where the flow can go into 3 lines, and vertically resizing the ribbon is not a good user experience.

[MichaelWDenney]

That all makes sense and what I expected. I was just wondering if there was a way to globally scale all the heights and thus have smaller presentation states and a shorter ribbon without impacting horizontal resizing. I think the answer is: not as designed?

[kirill-grouchnikov]

While the API surface of command buttons allows for much greater flexibility in terms of sizing and layout of content, the ribbon only supports big, medium and small buttons. The overall grid rhythm of the ribbon is three rows of content, which is either medium or small buttons, and then when there is enough horizontal space, switch to big buttons that span three rows. Flow ribbon bands provide support for going to two rows as sort of a middle ground.

Opening this up to a more flexible world is unlikely to happen, because it would make promises that can't be fully delivered. Supporting arbitrary command button layout managers is a whole can of worms. It would need a lot of assumptions on how arbitrarily sized buttons can be fit into the grid, how the grid expands or shrinks vertically across multiple ribbon bands (does it support, for example, a global two-row configuration), how each ribbon band responds to horizontal resizing, how ribbon galleries look like in a world that has less vertical space (they show three buttons for scrolling the content), etc.

[MichaelWDenney]

Ok. Thanks for the info.