Ribbon, Bars and Menu

• May 22, 2025
• 3 minutes to read

This section describes DevExpress components that implement toolbars, ribbons, and context menus. These UI components are available on the DX.25.1.WPF: Navigation & Layout toolbox tab.

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Bars

DevExpress Bars use traditional toolbars to organize application commands. Toolbars are a familiar and intuitive menu type for users. DevExpress Bars for WPF offer the following features:

• Three bar types can be used together within a form: the main menu bar, regular toolbar, and status bar. A corresponding standalone bar control is available for each bar type.
• A Bar Manager component that provides centralized access over the entire toolbar system.
• The Runtime Customization feature allows your end-users to customize toolbars and menus at runtime as their needs dictate.
• The MDI Bar Merging feature allows merging toolbars from child to parent documents in multi document interfaces (MDI).

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Topic: Bars

Ribbon

First introduced in Microsoft Office 2007, the Ribbon is a modern alternative to traditional toolbars. It organizes commands into categories, pages, and groups for a cleaner, more structured menu. The Ribbon control includes the following features:

• Multiple Ribbon Styles emulate the appearance and behavior of all Office app generations starting from 2007 - up to the modern iPad and Universal products.
• The embedded Quick Access Toolbar that contains links to the most commonly used commands.
• Two types of the main application menu, invoked by the Application Button.
• Full integration with the ThemedWindow.

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Topic: Ribbon

Menus

You can provide your applications with various context menus of different appearances and functionality. These menus can be integrated with both Bars and Ribbons, or used separately. There are three available menu types.

• Popup Menu - a regular popup menu.
• Radial Menu - a Microsoft OneNote 2013 inspired pop-up menu in which items are arranged in a circle.
• Popup Control Container - a control container that supports the popup functionality.

Tip

Topic: Menus

Common Features

The following topics describe features common to Bars, Ribbon and Menus.

• Items and Links

  Interface elements displayed by bars, ribbon and menus are represented by bar items and links.

• The List of Bar Items and Links

  Lists all elements that can be added to bars, ribbon and menus.

• Displaying Glyphs

  Demonstrates how to display icons within bar items.

• MVVM Support

  Illustrates how to build a user interface following the MVVM architectural pattern.

• Merging

  Describes the bar and ribbon merging in MDI applications.