Creating item templates for Ribbon customizations to use in Visual Studio

Despite my passion for all things related to code, I've always had a soft spot for UI that is exciting both in its "coolness" factor and visual appeal. Along those lines, one of my favorite new features in Access 2007 is Ribbon Extensibility. Writing the XML for a customization can be a bit of a bear, so here is a tip for making this easier.

Before getting started with creating your own customizations, there are a few things you should have:

• customUI.xsd schema for Ribbon extensibility
• Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer Express

With Visual Studio or one of the Express editions installed, you can create new file item templates that have portions of the XML of a customization already written. This involves creating the relevant XML and saving it to a particular directory, then modifying a file used by Visual Studio to tell it about the new file that you're adding.

For example, let's say that you wanted to create a new Ribbon customization that started with a blank Ribbon with a single tab with a single group. The XML for the customization might look something like:

Create a new XML file that uses this customization and save it as RibbonTabAndGroup.xml in the following location: %PROGRAMFILES%Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\NewFileItems. Change the path to Visual Studio/Visual Web Developer Express if needed.

Next, modify the NewFileItems.vsdir file in the NewFileItems directory to add the new item. For details about this file, check out this article in MSDN. Add the following record to the .vsdir file as the last line of the file.

After you add the record to the file, close and re-open Visual Studio. Click the File menu, then choose New and choose File... You should now see the new item in the New File dialog as shown here.