Merge Menus

Hi Simon,

Unfortunately you'd probably need to programmatically swap in and out controls right now. Or perhaps have different tabs that you show/hide based on what window is active.

Having read the Ribbon recomendations, merging menus looks like something I shouldn't be doing anyhow.

From what I gather the ribbon should contain all your commands, and not remove them based on context (so ribbon stays consistent all the time). Contextual stuff goes into contextual tabs.

Groups
Displaying Groups
3. Controls displayed in a group MUST NOT change as a result of selection. If a control is not active, then the control MUST be grayed out, rather than removed from the group.

So I need to have a think about which way to go; menus or ribbon.
I found these links that have been pretty useful.

Is a ribbon right for your app
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc872782.aspx#rightui

Overview of app types and prefered menu/ribbon/toolbar choice
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc872780.aspx

That is certainly true. The contents of tabs should remain constant. You can enable/disable controls as appropriate, or swap in and out contextual tabs. But the goal of the ribbon is to keep everything visible and in the same general location with only variants changing the layout.