The first Ribbon Bar for Silverlight, to fully comply with the Microsoft fluent UI guidelines.

This week we will release new major feature for the RadRibbonBar – keyboard access.

KeyTips provide keyboard access to every control in the Ribbon. They are activated by pressing the ALT key, following by the key for the button you want to activate. KeyTips are very well explained at the Microsoft’s fluent UI guidelines, you can read more about KeyTips on msdn…

This feature is in the Required section from the Ribbon specification, but it’s nature and hard implementation details was preventing us from implementing it sooner.

Currently this feature is the one with most votes in our PITS system, thus we considered it for high priority.

Announcing the first keyboard support for Silverlight Ribbon Bar.

Currently this is feature is not implemented by any other control vendor for Silverlight. Telerik is the first to offer this feature.

KeyTips are also available for the ApplicationMenu, QuickAccessToolbar, drop down items – DropDown buttons, Split Buttons, Collapsible panels and so forth.

With KeyTips you can “execute” each action available on the Ribbon:

• You can simulate click on a button
• You can Open drop down contents
• You can expand collapsed groups (Editing – ZN tip)
• You can execute Group dialog launcher.
• You can open galleries
• Drop down the ComboBox, check checkboxes and so on…

With other words – KeyTips should fully replace the mouse for those that wants to. And it will do it with the new RadRibbonBar.

You may see the ApplicationMenu tips as well.

You may also notice the new re-designed ApplicationMenu and Collapse button (on the top right).

It will be officially Available with the Service Pack 1.

You will be able to play with it later this week - with the internal build.

In the following release you will see some more really nice RadRibbonBar features like:

• Full DataBinding support
• New design for the ApplicationMenu
• Collapse Ribbon button
• And a lot more fixes

What’s next for Telerik RadRibbonBar

For the next official release, we will be working on RadRibbonWindow for Silverlight (OOB) and Office 2010 Theme with Back-stage functionality.

Also available for WPF.

As you already know, our suite is fully compatible with Silverlight and WPF as well, so the guys using Windows Presentation Foundation will also be able to use the keyboard navigation.

Hope you will enjoy this major feature. Thanks for your feedback.