Use old style of the Ribbon's contextual tab groups

Hi Dan,

In the theming updates for v20.1, we consolidated RibbonWindow to use our WindowChrome for rendering.  RibbonWindow used to have its own custom template and had special extremely complex logic for title bar arranging to support contextual tab group background rendering.  This all made it difficult to maintain relative to WindowChrome.  Since WindowChrome now does all the RibbonWindow theming for consistency, it no longer renders any backgrounds in the title bar area for contextual tab groups, which matches newer Office versions.  Unfortunately v20.1 and later no longer support rendering contextual tab backgrounds in the title bar like old Office versions did.

In the future, we will be continuing to update our themes to match newer Office and Windows 11 so that apps can maintain parity with the latest Microsoft offerings.

Dang, I was afraid of that. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly!

The main motive for upgrading was actually moving our dependencies to Nuget. Is there any chance version 19.1 is making it's way to Nuget?

Hi Dan,

I'm sorry but we don't have plans to publish older versions on nuget.org than what is already there.  You could always make a private local NuGet service that contained old versions and use that.

If you wanted to talk more offline about the original subject, we could do so.  Perhaps email our support address, mention this thread, and send a screenshot or two of how you're using Ribbon right now.  We'd love to get you on the latest version.

Hi! Just to follow up on this now that you have separated the legacy Ribbon from the Bars...

Does the 24.1 Original Ribbon Assembly support the pre-WindowChrome update? Specifically, can we use Office 2016 style with Contextual Tab Labels? Or is that also updated...?

Just want to be 100% clear so we can make an informed decision.

Thanks!

Tom

Hi Tom,

The classic Ribbon product no longer has Office 2016 appearance either.  It renders similar to the Office appearance that came after that, which was close, but with tweaks.  You can still see the classic Ribbon product in our Sample Browser app.

The ribbon control in the new Bars product tracks with the current Office appearance and has the most modern look.