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Key Tips

Key Tips are yet another replacement for the main menu bar (the other replacement being the Application Menu). End users use main menu mnemonics to quickly access menu items through keystrokes. Normally, you would access the mnemonics by first pressing the Alt key. Once the Alt key is pressed, certain letters in the main menu are underlined (i.e. the 'F' in File, the 'E' in Edit), identifying that letter as a mnemonic. You would then continue pressing underlined letters to navigate through the main menu. Key Tips work in very much the same way.

Using xamRibbon™, when you press the Alt key, incredibly tiny ToolTips, only large enough to fit one to three consecutive letters, display over each Tab, Group, and Tool. Key Tips will also display for the Application Menu button and the Quick Access Toolbar. Once you press the appropriate key for a Tab, that Tab will become active if it isn’t already. Key Tips for the associated Tab’s Groups are now displayed.

You also have the option of customizing these Key Tips if the auto-generated ones aren’t to your liking. Almost every element in xamRibbon exposes a KeyTip property. To set an element’s Key Tip, you simply set the KeyTip property to any string containing one to three letters.

If we’ve piqued your interest, you can read the following topic to learn much more about xamRibbon’s Key Tips.