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Hey guys,

I'm looking to make a custom ribbon for a code contest and I'm having trouble locating good information about custom ribbons. Any resources you guys can recommend? Just looking to get started on a ribbon for Word really.

I am not sure if this is something that will help you, but you can look at the links below if you have not already seen them.  I have not worked very much with it myself, so I can't evaluate them from experience.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386198.aspx

http://whitepapers.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=283035&promo=110000

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb738406.aspx

I think the first and final link you mention are going to be good resources. I searched MSDN but did not come up with these links, I've got to gain a better approach to searching through the MSDN.

The plan is to break it down into my terms and I'll be posting the final code on codeplex for my project, so hopefully that'll be one more useful reqource on ribbons for the future. I'm wondering if the new ribbons in WPF work similarly, if so we might both see more use from them. Also, Windows 7 is supposedly going to use the ribbon to a greater degree as well, it'll be nice to see how it all plays out.

Turns out that ribbon design in Visual Studio 2008 is fairly straightforward. Since VSTO is already integrated, you just add a new Word Addin (or whatever type addin) and then add a ribbon to that project (comes in two flavors, XML and Visual designer). The Visual designer abstracts the ribbon design in a similar fashion to regular winforms development.

With a little tinkering I was able to make a dynamic ribbonmenu that displayed IE favorites in Word. Real straightforward, just takes a little adjustment to the new controls.