SandBar - Summary
by Divelements - Product Type: Component / .NET WinForms / .NET Class / 100% Managed Code
Summary
SandBar by Divelements
Add Office and Visual Studio dockable toolbars and menus to your applications. SandBar is a powerful and lightweight toolbar and menuing library. It combines a rich and intuitive design time experience with a solid, extensible architecture and renderers that mimic Microsoft Office 2003, Office XP and Visual Studio 2005. Included are dockable toolbars, menus, statusbars, task panes and much more. The library includes full WYSIWYG designer support for menus and toolbars and a comprehensive API for extensive customisation and deep integration by your developers.
Features:
SandBar has a robust set of features, all geared to help the developer create the perfect toolbar/menuing system. Most of its features are highly customisable and extensible:
Toolbars
Can be standalone in any container or part of a SandBar layout to allow docking and floating
Can be docked at any orientation, allowing for vertical button layout
Support imagelists, direct icon assignment or direct image assignment
The user's chosen layout can easily be persisted to and restored from a file
Any control can be hosted on a toolbar by extending base classes
All text is fully localisable
Right-to-left layout is fully supported for languages such as Hebrew or Arabic
ContainerBars extend the toolbar to give the Office task pane look and feel
StatusBars extend the toolbar to give specialised statusbar appearance and functionality
Easy linking of toolbar items to menu items removes the need to write code to handle toolbar button activation
Automatic toolbar conversion can convert your standard .net toolbars to SandBar toolbars
In-situ editing of toolbar items at design time including drag-and-drop and clipboard support
Menuing
Supports smooth animations including slide, fade and unfold
Support imagelists, direct icon assignment or direct image assignment
Completely proprietary menu system allows docking, floating and even hosted controls
Any top-level menu item can be used as a context menu on any control
Optional automatic MDI window list functionality
Optional automatic menu merging functionality
Little-used items can be initially hidden until the user clicks a chevron button
Right-to-left layout is fully supported for languages such as Hebrew or Arabic
Shortcut pairs are supported for advanced editing operations (e.g. Ctrl+K, Ctrl-C)
Automatic menu conversion can convert your standard .net menus to SandBar menus
Advanced menu designers allow you to design and configure your menu system visually
Look and Feel
Pluggable renderer system allows complete control over drawing of all toolbar and menu items.
Includes renderers to mimic Office XP, Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005.
Layout Engine
SandBar includes a powerful layout engine which allows you to give your users maximum flexibility when customising your applications. SandBar uses this layout engine to power its various controls, including toolbars, menus, statusbars and containerbars. These controls can be docked to any location in your container or floated at any location on the screen. Docked bars can sit next to other bars and slide in to position automatically when the layout changes. They can optionally stretch to fill available space on their row.
As well as being movable, bars can also be torn off the sides of the form in to a floating state. They then stay hovering above your form, visible when the form is active, until the user drags them back in to a container or changes their position. While floating, a toolbar can be resized; items wrap intelligently to fit in the layout space available. Persisting the toolbar layouts configured by your users is made easy with two simple functions, which can optionally persist the visible states of all the buttons on the toolbar.
'Action Buttons' at the end of each toolbar provide access to any buttons that are hidden due to space constraints, and also allow the user to turn buttons on and off at will.
When short of space, buttons are either hidden and accessed via a 'chevron' that appears in the actions button on the end of a toolbar, or wrapped to the next line. Five different levels of importance can be applied to toolbar items, and those that are least important can be hidden first when space gets tight.
The SandBar menuing system can be heavily customised and extended by the developer. For instance, you may want a popup menu that looks different from standard menus in order to better present a specific set of options. An example of this is the dropdown colour selection tool in Microsoft Word, which shows many options on one row as well as an option to choose a custom colour. An example of writing a custom menu is provided with the SandBar demonstration application.
Look and Feel
There are three renderers included with SandBar; one that mimics Office 2003, one that mimics Office XP and one that mimics Visual Studio 2005. All of these renderers expose properties that allow you control over the colours they use as a base to draw with. The Office XP renderer lets you change the background and highlight colours, and the Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 renderers allow you to change the colours used to draw gradients and borders.
You can also inherit from these renderers or write your own from scratch to take complete control of the drawing process. Every part of the SandBar drawing process can be overridden and taken complete control of.
Designer Support
The designer support included with SandBar is unparalleled. Menu designers built from the ground up let you design complex menu systems visually, by expanding and collapsing them just as you would at run-time. ToolBar designers allow you to select and drag buttons from one location to another. You can even drag menu items from a menu on a menubar to a dropdown menu on a toolbar.
This level of designer integration will ensure you have a fully working, great looking application up and running in a matter of minutes, without even writing any code.
Localisation
All instances of English text in SandBar can be localised to any language.
SandBar is one of the only toolbar/menu libraries to support right-to-left menu layout for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. Shown right is a SandBar layout mimicing the Arabic version of Microsoft Word with the Edit menu open.
Because the same advanced layout engine is shared between all bars, you can choose to make toolbars and statusbars right-to-left aware as well as just menus.
What's new in V1.x?
MenuPopupEventArgs now has a Cancel property
PartNumbers: PC-516204-154808 516204-154808 PC-516204-154809 516204-154809 PC-516204-154810 516204-154810 PC-516204-154812 516204-154812 PC-516204-154816 516204-154816 PC-516204-154811 516204-154811 PC-516204-154813 516204-154813 PC-516204-154814 516204-154814 PC-516204-154815 516204-154815 PC-516204-154817 516204-154817
PurchaseOptions: SandBar V1.4.2 - includes 1 year free product updates and unlimited email support 1 Developer License , SandBar V1.4.2 - includes 1 year free product updates and unlimited email support 2-3 Developer License (Price per Developer, Minimum quantity 2) , SandBar V1.4.2 - includes 1 year free product updates and unlimited email support 4-7 Developer License (Price per Developer, Minimum quantity 4) , SandBar V1.4.2 - includes 1 year free product updates and unlimited email support 8 Developer License or above (Price per Developer, Minimum quantity 8) , SandBar V1.4.2 - includes 1 year free product updates and unlimited email support Unlimited Site License (Allows Unlimited Developers at a Single Physical Address) , SandBar - Support Renewal 1 Developer Support Renewal License , SandBar - Support Renewal 2-3 Developer Support Renewal License (Price per Developer, Minimum quantity 2) , SandBar - Support Renewal 4-7 Developer Support Renewal License (Price per Developer, Minimum quantity 4) , SandBar - Support Renewal 8 Developer or above Support Renewal License (Price per Developer, Minimum quantity 8) , SandBar - Support Renewal Unlimited Site Support Renewal License (Allows Unlimited Developers at a Single Physical Address)
Resources: Browse the SandBar Screenshot Gallery, Read the SandBar help file, Read the Divelements EULA, Download the SandBar V1.4 evaluation for VS 2003 on to your computer - Expires after 30 days, Download the SandBar V1.4 evaluation for VS 2005 on to your computer - Expires after 30 days
Operating System for Deployment: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows 98
Architecture of Product: 32Bit, 64Bit
Product Type: Component
Component Type: .NET WinForms, .NET Class, 100% Managed Code
Built Using: Visual C# .NET
Compatible Containers: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, Microsoft Visual Basic 2008, Microsoft Visual Basic 2005, Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2003, Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft Visual C++ 2008, Microsoft Visual C++ 2005, Microsoft Visual C++ .NET 2003, Microsoft Visual C++ .NET, Microsoft Visual C# 2008, Microsoft Visual C# 2005, Microsoft Visual C# .NET 2003, Microsoft Visual C# .NET, .NET Framework 3.5, .NET Framework 3.0, .NET Framework 2.0, .NET Framework 1.1, .NET Framework 1.0
Search Items: New Product July 05, New Product Aug 05
Keywords: Toolbar tool bar tool-bar Toolbars Menu Menus Professional Partner office toolbar dockable menu xp SandBar Sand Bar
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