Wow, it seems like forever since I last worked on the PBGUIControls. I've received a lot of feedback and enhancement ideas over the months. Now it's time to implement.

I spent the whole night last night moving changes from my "personal" version of the controls to the public version. There are some enhancements to how dock panels pop out and in. It should be much better. In the past the dock panel would close to soon when your mouse left it. I've also added some visibility logic to the toolbar. Now you can make toolbar items visible and invisible as you wish. A fellow PBer had a great new idea for the ButtonListbar. You can now display it as a list instead of a button list (you'll have to see it). This has been added and is working great.

I have so many more ideas that I really don't know where to start. My first plan of action is to make sure that all the changes that other people have made and provided me are available in the public version. Once this is done I will spend some time on the tab control, toolbar control and maybe PowerDock. This is what I'm thinking:

Tab Control:

1 - Add function so you can display close button on the tab strip (like it is now) or on the actual tab itself.

Toolbar Control:

1 - Support 16x16, 24x24, 32x32 and 48x48 icons.
2 - Add padding properties to the toolbar items.
3 - Allow the developer to change the position of the text (Right side, Left side, Top or Bottom)

PowerDock:

1 - I really want to see split panes. The ability to display two tab controls side-by-side.
2 - Look into adding an optional close button to the panels.

For the last couple weeks I've been thinking about how I could create a Ribbon control for PB. I'm still debating on whether it's possible. I think in addition to the control a new designer would have to be created to support it. This could be a lot of work all on its own. What do you think, is it worth the effort?

Lastly, I've made a decision to no longer enhance the .Net Winforms version of the UI controls. I find that they are two hard to work with because a lot of what I need on the .Net side isn't available to me. Also, porting changes over to the .Net version is very time consuming. I don't think the return on investment is there. Please let me know if this is a bad decision. Are many of you deploying as a .Net Winforms application?