RibbonX: Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon (Paperback)

~ (Author), Ken Puls (Author), (Author)
Key Phrases: navigation pane, customization layer, contextual controls, Advanced Concepts, Successful Customization, Select Case (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

• As the most radical change to the Office interface in its history, the Ribbon replaces the traditional menu bar and toolbars and requires a new set of skills for customizing
• Instructions and examples demonstrate how to customize the Ribbon using VBA, XML, Access, Excel, and Word
• Covers the relevant aspects of security, such as trust centers and digital certificates
• Packed with real-world code examples that readers can immediately apply
• Features helpful references

From the Back Cover

Microsoft MVPs teach you new skills for customizing the Ribbon

If you like to build custom applications or customize the Office user interface, this book is for you. Written by a team of Microsoft MVPs, it shows you—step by step—how easy it is to modify the Microsoft Office® 2007 Ribbon, how the Ribbon works, and how you can customize it to add functionality. You'll learn to leverage the RibbonX API to hide, create, add, and group controls.

Along with techniques for using XML, VBA, and Access macros, you'll find clear instructions, practical examples, and real-world code you can use. This is the perfect guide for beginners, developers, and power users alike.

• Explore the Ribbon user interface and Quick Access Toolbar

• Access the CustomUI Editor and start modifying

• Learn the essentials of XML and why you need it

• Write and debug your own code with Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA)

• Master RibbonX basic controls and create custom, static, and dynamic menus

• Deploy your Ribbon customizations across files

• Gain a working knowledge of key aspects of Office security such as digital certificates and privacy settings

Inside you'll also find a handy table of RibbonX tags, a tool to quickly reveal the imageMso references and generate its XML, and much more.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 696 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470191112
• ISBN-13: 978-0470191118
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #54,825 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable, comprehensive, authoritative, occasionally frustrating, January 27, 2008

By	William N. Coan (Hortonville, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The more serious you are about customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon, the more you'll like this valuable, comprehensive, authoritative, but occasionally frustrating book. The flow of information in the book isn't always from the simple to the complex, and some of the chapters are less well written than others (about which, more later), but the authors have succeeded in giving you everything you need in order to take charge of the user experience within Access 2007, Excel 2007, and Word 2007.

The authors don't merely explain ribbon customizations and then declare themselves done. They recognize that ribbon customizations would be nearly useless if not backed by appropriate automation routines and by deployment methods that comply with Office security requirements. As a result, they go to considerable extra effort to provide introductory and advanced chapters on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming, plus a chapter on deployment of customizations and also a chapter on Office security.

The book devotes a separate chapter to each of the various types of controls found on the Ribbon. These include basic controls (buttons, checkboxes, edit boxes, toggle buttons), combobox/dropdown controls, custom pictures/galleries, menus, and controls that the authors refer to as "formatting" elements (boxes, groups, labels, separators). Each of these chapters is organized in the same way. Element names, attribute names, and allowed values are fully documented, as are the VB/VBA callback signatures for dynamic attributes. Best of all, each chapter includes examples of RibbonX code and VBA routines for accomplishing something useful with each type of control.

One of the most helpful chapters in the book is devoted to working with contextual controls, i.e., controls presented to the user only in certain contexts, such as when a particular type of object is selected within the host application. This chapter covers techniques for controlling the visibility of ribbon tabs, groups, and individual controls, and it shows how to enable or disable these items when their visibility can't be controlled. The chapter even demonstrates how to supplement contextual ribbon controls with contextual command bars (right-click menus). Superb!

The introductory VBA chapter covers the VBA editor, subroutines, functions, object models, branching structures, arrays, and debugging. The advanced VBA chapter provides valuable tips for working with collections, working with classes, working with web services, creating custom properties for built-in objects, and saving and retrieving registry values-all of which can be exploited when customizing the ribbon.

The book's appendices include lists of RibbonX tags, idMso names for built-in tabs and groups, imageMso names for images on built-in ribbon controls, and key tips and accelerator keys. Also included are an appendix that lists suggested naming conventions and another that lists additional resources on the web.

Readers who are new to XML and/or to the RibbonX vocabulary and/or to the new Office XML file formats will experience some frustration when trying to decipher the first three chapters and parts of later chapters. In all cases, the information such readers need is there, but some of it isn't well organized, and some of it isn't well written. The book's first example of RibbonX isn't as simple as it could have been, and some of the simplest customizations (including disabling built-in controls) are held back until Chapter 13, where they are characterized as "advanced" concepts.

The chapter on "Accessing the User Interface Customization Layer" of the new Office XML file formats fails to explain what happens when an Office 2007 application opens an Office XML file. (The key steps are these: The application looks inside the zip-format XML file structure for a folder called _rels, and then looks inside that folder for a file called .rels, and then reads that file to find out where any customizations are stored.) Instead, the chapter forces the reader to follow a tedious example in order to discover the steps involved, and even then fails to spell out the steps explicitly. At one point, the chapter tells the reader to "return to the Custom UI editor to troubleshoot the XML code," despite the fact that the reader hasn't been told at that point what the Custom UI editor is, where to download it, or how to use it.

The chapter on callbacks fails to explain what happens when an Office 2007 application loads a user interface customization into memory. (One key step is this: The application reads the user interface element's "onLoad" attribute and then makes a call to the routine whose name has been assigned to that attribute.) Instead, the chapter simply tells the reader that "you need to specify a value" for that attribute. A reader with previous experience can make the necessary inference, but a reader new to the subject matter might not be able to do so and in any case shouldn't be required to do so.

The chapter on sharing and deploying ribbon customizations is well conceived and well written, but it includes a number of errors. For example, it says that "Any [ribbon] customizations stored in a template will travel with the documents created on the template." (Not true in Word 2007.) The chapter makes a confusing distinction between "add-in" templates and "global" templates in Word 2007. (By design in Word, all add-in templates are global templates. The meaningful distinction is between add-in templates loaded automatically at startup and those loaded later.) The chapter says that you have to quit Word and move an add-in out of the startup folder before you can edit it. (Not so. The add-in merely has to be unloaded.) The chapter says, "You cannot deactivate templates [in Word] as easily as in Excel. Word has no such option." (Not true. On the Developer tab, simply choose Document Template and then remove the checkmark next to the add-in template.)

The techniques described in the book can be employed by any user of Office without recourse to specialized programming tools other than XML Notepad and the Custom UI editor, both of which can be downloaded from Microsoft at no cost. So, if customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon is your goal, and if you have the patience to read and then reread some passages of the book along the way, then you will find in it everything you need in order to accomplish your goal.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars RibbonX Book Gets a "C", May 25, 2008

By	Robert Homes (Gulfport, Ms USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book covers the new "Ribbon" interface used in Microsoft Office 2007. The Ribbon replaces the old menus and toolbars in Office programs, and unlike the menus and toolbars cannot be modified or added to easily. The new Office programs have only one toolbar, called the Quick Access toolbar, to which you can add toolbar buttons to run commands and macros; and there are no more menus.

The book teaches you the difficult process needed in order to modify the Ribbon in each Office program. It is not an easy process, as it involves writing XML code in addition to macro programming code. And opening the necessary XML files in order to modify them isn't easy either.

The book does a fairly good job of presenting the process, and documenting the various XML "tags" needed. However, it is not well written, and its explanations of the programming concepts are a bit muddled, especially for novices like me. The constant statements of "we'll explain this later" become aggravating after awhile; its like the authors themselves are feeling their way along with their readers. I guess by the end of the book, they have figured out what they were trying to teach; that should make the next edition a little better!

One thing you should know if you want to modify the Ribbon in the Office programs is that there are programs out there that have been and are being written to automate the process so that you don't really need to know the details in the depth this book attempts to teach. (But having this book could be a help in using and understanding those programs.) There are two programs available now, one of which is called RibbonCustomizer (and is very well designed).

Also, if you are a programmer using Visual Studio 2008, you can obtain from Microsoft a free addin called VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) that contains features that allow you to write your own programs to modify the Ribbon. I'm not sure about this (I'm a novice programmer myself), but I think the free VSTO addin for VS 2008 eliminates the need to purchase the VSTO program separately. You had to pay a hefty price for the VSTO program needed as an addin for VS 2005, but it seems that now it can be added for free to VS 2008.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Embrace the Ribbon, January 30, 2008

By	Robert Larson "Bob Larson" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are ready to work with Microsoft Office 2007, and make it your own, the book "RibbonX, Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon" is the book for you. I started out with no XML knowledge, and no experience in customizing the new Office 2007 Ribbon, and within a very short time I had created my very first customized Ribbon. The book goes into some XML and VBA basics and is comfortable reading for a true beginner as well as those who may have more experience. In this past year, which I have been working with Office 2007, I have been intimidated by the thought of venturing into Ribbon territory. After reading this book, I no longer fear the Ribbon. In fact, I embrace the opportunities that are awaiting my use of it.

So, I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to be able to customize their own Office 2007 experience, or the experience of the users of their creation. You won't want to be without it.

Bob Larson
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