A 'hello world' VB.NET program

Creating a tab

• Add a new class to your project and name it MyCustomUI.
• Add the following code to your class

1. Imports LogismiX.Interop.DynamicRibbonX

2. Imports LogismiX.DynamicRibbonX.Core

4. Public Class MyCustomUI

5.     Dim _customUI As rxCustomUI

7.     Public Sub New()

8.         ' Instantiate a new rxCustomUI in context 'my_vb_context'

9.         _customUI = rxCustomUI.create("my_vb_context", "My VB.NET context!")

11.         ' Cache a reference to the customUI's ribbon

12.         Dim myRibbon As rxRibbon = _customUI.ribbon

14.         ' Create a new tab and label it 'My VB Tab'

15.         Dim myTab As rxTab = New rxTab()

16.         myTab.label = "My VB Tab"

18.         ' Add the tab to myRibbon's tabs

19.         myRibbon.tabs.add(myTab)

21.         ' Render the UI

22.         _customUI.refresh()

24.     End Sub

26. End Class

• Modify class ThisAddin in ThisAddin.vb as follows

1. Public Class ThisAddIn

3.     Private _myCustomUI As MyCustomUI

5.     Private Sub ThisAddIn_Startup() Handles Me.Startup

6.         _myCustomUI = New MyCustomUI()

7.     End Sub

9.     Private Sub ThisAddIn_Shutdown() Handles Me.Shutdown

11.     End Sub

13. End Class

• Run the add-in. If everything went according to plan a new tab labeled 'My VB Tab' will appear when the application starts

  

Code Analysis

8. ' Instantiate a new rxCustomUI in context 'my_vb_context'

9. _customUI = rxCustomUI.create("my_vb_context", "My VB.NET context!")

rxCustomUI is at the top of the object model hierarchy. Here we instantiate a new rxCustomUI object in a new context with id 'my_vb_context' and description 'My VB.NET context!'

11. ' Cache a reference to the customUI's ribbon

12. Dim myRibbon As rxRibbon = _customUI.ribbon

Each rxCustomUI object owns a unique rxRibbon object. Here, we are caching a reference to the rxRibbon object of _customUI

14. ' Create a new tab and label it 'My VB Tab'

15. Dim myTab As rxTab = New rxTab()

16. myTab.label = "My VB Tab"

Here, we create a new rxTab object and give it a label

18. ' Add the tab to myRibbon's tabs

19. myRibbon.tabs.add(myTab)

Each rxRibbon object has a collection of rxTab object (accessible through its tabs property). Here we add the tab we created above to our ribbon's tabs

21. ' Render the UI

22. _customUI.refresh()

To ensure optimal performance, UI updates always take place in two steps:

1. Update the target rxCustomUI state, which we have done above
2. Render the updated UI, which we are doing here

Remarks

• rxCustomUI contexts are identified by their unique context ids (e.g. 'my_vb_context' above). When an rxCustomUI is created with a contextId that doesn't correspond to an existing context, the context gets created. Otherwise the rxCustomUI joins the context and shares its state with other rxCustomUIs in it.
• You can use rxCustomUI.clear to clear a context's state

Making our code more compact

The Dynamic RibbonX API is composable, which we can take advantage to make our code more compact:

1. Public Class MyCustomUI

2.     Dim _customUI As rxCustomUI

4.     Public Sub New()

5.         ' Instantiate a new rxCustomUI in context 'my_vb_context'

6.         _customUI = rxCustomUI.create("my_vb_context", "My VB.NET context!")

8.         With _customUI

9.             ' Clear old state in the context

10.             .clear()

12.             ' Add a new tab and label it 

13.             With .ribbon.tabs.add(New rxTab())

14.                 .label = "My VB Tab"

15.             End With

17.             ' Render the UI

18.             .refresh()

19.         End With

20.     End Sub

22. End Class