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[e4-dev] Re: ribbon experiment on e4?

> It would be really interesting to hear your report of how hard it was to change Eclipse 
> 3.x to use the ribbon 

It should be pretty straightforward to anybody who has created an RCP application with a customized UI.

To add the Ribbon to 3.5.x I just override IDEWorkbenchWindowAdvisor and provide a custom createWindowContentsMethod. Two little drawbacks with my approach: no trim support (since it's very coupled to internal code) and I have to create the coolbar (and hide it). since the workbench code assumes there is a coolbar.

http://github.com/elias42/ribbonide/blob/master/de.volanakis.ribbonide/src/de/volanakis/ribbonide/internal/app/RibbonIDEWorkbenchWindowAdvisor.java

What I found more difficult was adding some of the view actions to the toolbar, esp. from the older areas of the code base. These are not always exposed via commands, have some interesting assumptions or are added programmatically (i.e. without ext. point usage).

Hope this helps, 
Elias.



On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Susan Franklin McCourt <susan_franklin@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi, again, Elias...
Some of us on the platform UI team were talking today about your screencast. We were thinking that an e4 implementation (where you change the workbench application model and the renderer for the toolbar/menus to use the ribbon) would be a great way to push the e4 application model implementation and rendering model.

We don't have the compatibility workbench back up yet, but you could start by trying to "ribbonize" one of the demos.

It would be really interesting to hear your report of how hard it was to change Eclipse 3.x to use the ribbon compared to doing so in e4. In theory, it would be simpler (or at least cleaner from a code perspective) to do so in e4. If this is not the case, we'd want to know!

Interested?

susan
----- Forwarded by Susan Franklin McCourt/Beaverton/IBM on 01/05/2010 11:20 AM -----



          Susan Franklin McCourt

          12/23/2009 11:14 AM


To: E4 Project developer mailing list <e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
cc:
From: Susan Franklin McCourt/Beaverton/IBM@IBMUS
Subject: Re: [e4-dev] modernizing the workbench visual design and remaining a good platform citizenSusan Franklin McCourt

Hi, Elias.
Great screencast! I found that the live demo really helped, in particular emphasizing how the ribbon groupings depict the perspective switch. I found that the perspective change seems less "jarring" to me when selected that way, though I'd have to really use it to confirm this feeling. It was also cool to see the menu bar popping in.

We have numerous bugs about using the ribbon, but I didn't see one tracking the question of "should we use this in the Eclipse SDK UI?" so I opened one. [1]. I marked it with a 4.0 milestone, but I realize there's no technical reason it would have to be in 4.0. I do think that it will become interesting to consider the ribbon organization when considering the other visual design changes for 4.0 [2].

susan

[1] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=298481
[2] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=293481

Inactive hide details for Elias Volanakis ---12/19/2009 03:57:17 PM---On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Susan Franklin McCourt < Elias Volanakis ---12/19/2009 03:57:17 PM---On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Susan Franklin McCourt < susan_franklin@xxxxxxxxxx





To: E4 Project developer mailing list <e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
cc:
Subject: Re: [e4-dev] modernizing the workbench visual design and remaining a good platform citizen


On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Susan Franklin McCourt <susan_franklin@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
    Also, do you have a link (blog, bug, whatever) to the preferred place where we can monitor your experiments in the ribbon space? Fun to watch....

Susan and e4-dev,

I've begun to blog about my ribbon experiments (with a short screencast): http://eclipsenuggets.blogspot.com

The code is available on github under EPL (http:/github.com/elias42/ribbonide), but it still needs some work before I could ship something genuinely useful. 

Technically it is based on Eclipse 3.5.x. It provides an application for the IDE that adds the ribbon widget via the window advisor and a custom presentation. My goal is to flesh these things out over the holidays.

Elias.
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--
Elias Volanakis | Technical Lead | http://eclipsesource.com
elias@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | +1 503 929 5537 | @evolanakis

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