Tabs Package

The 'XP Tab' (TabControAdv) feature provided as part of this package is an advanced tab control with many appearance styles and configuration capabilities. The creation of custom tabs with custom shapes and styles is efficient and simplified with this package.

'XP Tab' is a completely native .NET tab control implementation that comes with more configuration and customization capabilities than the legacy wrapper of the .NET framework. It provides the basic functionalities of a standard tab control and much more.

The XP Tab Control is an advanced tab control with options that allow the creation of very sophisticated tabbed interfaces. Various styles are available to customize the appearance of the tabs created using the TabControlAdv. They have been illustrated below:

Office 2007 Color Schemes (Black and Silver) are now extended in the TabControlAdv control to provide improved look and feel for real world applications.

The Tabs can be aligned to the top, bottom, left or right as shown below:

The tabs can be arranged in a single line or multiple lines. Further, the TabControlAdv is also provided with the ShrinkToFit and FillToRight sizing modes.

The text and vertical line alignment of the text can be set to near, center or far as illustrated below:

Essential Tabs provides a set of options to customize the TabControlAdv with images.

TabControlAdv can have images set outside the Tab bounds.

Various alignment options are available for the image position with respect to the text such as Left of text, Right of text, Above text and so on.

The TabSplitter control supports VS2008 style tabbed, split view of groups of tabs, to help you easily render different views of the same document in your forms.

• Horizontal and Vertical Split Views support.

• Swapping Tab Groups.

Your users can easily swap the tab groups using built in controls, just like VS 2008.

• Collapsing Tab Groups.

A group can be optionally collapsed by the end user, as shown.

TabControlAdv has the ability to add scroll buttons to the tab panel when there are a large number of tab pages. These scroll buttons in the TabContolAdv allow the user to navigate through the tab pages in the right-left direction.

Custom Colors can be applied to differentiate active and inactive tabs, individual tabs and the TabPanel while using the TabcontrolAdv.

Individual tab fonts can also be customized as desired.

The TabPanelBackColor can be set irrespective of the Tab style used.

Custom tab controls can be drawn utilizing the owner draw functionality. Some of them are given below:

Tab navigation can be accomplished using Tab primitives, while using the TabControlAdv. These primitives include

• FirstTab
• LastTab
• PreviousTab
• NextTab
• PreviousPage
• NextPage
• DropDown
• Close
• Custom

Custom images and tooltips can also be associated with these primitives.

Close button can be provided for tabs available in TabControlAdv. This feature comes with the following options:

• Close Button for all tab pages as seen in IE7
• Close Button for active tabs only
• Close Button for TabControlAdv to close currently selected Tab Page..
• Close Button with custom images.

Tab header text can be displayed in multiple lines while using the TabControlAdv.

Complete state persistence is available for the TabControlAdv. This includes the following options:

• Persist Tab State-Tab state is automatically maintained
• Save State-Current Tab state information is saved to respective serializer
• Load State-Previously serialized tab state is loaded.

Various avaliable features that add sophistication to the Tabs are listed below:

• Gaps can be set between tabs of the TabControlAdv

• Space around Tab header content can be modified using respective padding properties

• Tabs can be highlighted on mouse hover using the specialized hot tracking functionality

Scrolling in TabcontrolAdv can move through tabs or pages. Tabs can also be moved at runtime using the drag-and-drop functionality.