Tab

The Tab is a control that represents one of the tabs at the top of the ribbon.

It contains multiple Group controls, each of which contains multiple child controls.

Screenshot

Several ribbon tabs

Tab Types

There are two types of tabs: normal and contextual.

Normal tabs all draw in the same colors and are added to the ribbon via the Ribbon.Tabs collection.

Contextual tabs are tabs that contain controls that only should be displayed in certain contexts. For instance, perhaps when an image selection is made in a document. Contextual tabs may be grouped together with related contextual tabs in a ContextualTabGroup and are displayed when that group becomes active. Unlike regular tabs, contextual tabs are not added to the Ribbon.Tabs collection. Instead, they are added to a parent ContextualTabGroup. See the ContextualTabGroup topic for detailed information on how to define and activate contextual tab groups.

Adding/Removing Groups

Group controls for a Tab can be added to or removed from the Tab.Items collection.

This collection is the markup content property for the Tab control too, so Group controls can be added to a Tab as direct child elements in XAML.

Programmatically Selecting a Tab

Only one tab can be selected at any time within a ribbon.

The Ribbon.SelectedTab property allows you to get or set the Tab that is currently selected in the ribbon.

Tab Selection Events

The Ribbon control exposes two events related to the selection of a tab. The SelectedTabChanging event is raised before a tab change occurs and the SelectedTabChanged event is raised after a tab change occurs.

The event arguments for the changing event allow for the tab change to be cancelled by setting e.Cancel to true.

Selecting a Tab with the Keyboard

If you have defined a KeyTipAccessText on a Tab, that tab can quickly be accessed by holding Alt and typing the KeyTipAccessText letter.

For instance, if you assigned a KeyTipAccessText of H to your Home tab, pressing Alt+H will jump to that tab and start key tip mode for the controls within that tab.

Disabling Tabs

Tabs can be disabled by setting their Tab.IsEnabled property to false. While disabled, they cannot be clicked or selected by the end user. Their text will be drawn in a disabled color as well.

Sample XAML

This code sample shows how to easily define Group controls within a Tab in XAML.

<ribbon:Tab Label="Home" KeyTipAccessText="H">
	<ribbon:Group ImageSourceSmall="/Resources/Images/Paste16.png" Label="Clipboard" KeyTipAccessText="ZC" />
	<ribbon:Group ImageSourceSmall="/Resources/Images/FontColor16.png" Label="Font" KeyTipAccessText="ZF" />
	<ribbon:Group ImageSourceSmall="/Resources/Images/ParagraphCenter16.png" Label="Paragraph" KeyTipAccessText="ZP" />
	<ribbon:Group ImageSourceSmall="/Resources/Images/StylesGroup16.png" Label="Styles" KeyTipAccessText="ZS" />
	<ribbon:Group ImageSourceSmall="/Resources/Images/Find16.png" Label="Editing" KeyTipAccessText="ZN" />
</ribbon:Tab>

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