Finally after about 2 years as a CTP, Microsoft have released the WPF ribbon. Due to the delay, one can be certain that they were allowing their third party software vendors as much traction for users that needed a ribbon, but some brilliant open source versions including Fluent Ribbon Control Suite have been developed.

The best thing about the release, is that the Office Fluent UI licensing is now no longer a requirement. This allows people to download the software straight away, without having to go through the cumbersome process of logging into the Office website, signing the licensing, then spending half a day trying to locate the installation because it was hidden in a way that made you think they don’t want anyone to use it.

The download for the ribbon is available here. Please ensure that you also take the time to install the source and samples if you want to build MVVM compliant applications with the ribbon (you should be doing this in WPF anyway) . The MSDN documentation is available here.

The installation notes say that this is not supported on XP, but on vista upwards but I have not tested this. If there are issues then you should be able to use another vendor.

After installing the MSI you should have the following template in Visual Studio

There is no information on the installation templates for the express editions, but I would hazard a guess as to them never being available, as building applications with a Ribbon is not something a learner ‘typically’ does. If you are using express, then you should be able to add the requisite .dll thus. If you look in my Tree View below in Visual Studio, you will find that there is a reference to RibbonControlsLibrary. This is located at; C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Ribbon for WPF\v3.5.40729.1\RibbonControlsLibrary.dll

Note:  If you installed the source and samples as well, a .zip file with both is available at the same location. Copy this, and unzip it in a location of your choosing

The code behind for my window has the following code, so inherit off RibbonWindow

Finally your XAML should be defined so, and you’re good to go!