I'm writing a WPF application with uses the Microsoft ribbon from the System.Windows.Controls.Ribbon namespace. I'm trying to follow Microsoft's guidelines as closely as possible, but I noticed a few features they mention which I can't seem to find. One of these features is the "prompt". If you scroll down almost all the way to the bottom of the page I linked to (or just search for the word "prompt") you'll see an illustration and explanation of the feature I'm talking about.
I have quite a few 'RibbonTextBox'es and 'RibbonComboBox'es throughout my ribbon tabs, each one with a label next to it. Needless to say these labels take up a considerable amount of horizontal space. I would like to replace these with prompts, since when the boxes have content in them they are self-explanatory.
Is there any way to add prompts to the ribbon controls? I would especially like a nice clean method (who wouldn't?) but I'd appreciate any old way that get's the job done. Just keep in mind I'll need to implement this in a dozen or two different places.
Thanks for your help.
I managed to find a solution. Though it's not an official one from Microsoft, it is remarkably clean and easy to implement. I found this code and used it as a base to make my own attached behaviors for the RibbonComboBox; since RibbonTextBox inherits from the normal TextBox I was able to use the existing behavior (though I did modify it a bit).
In case anyone is interested I uploaded the code files here. This not only works for Ribbon controls but for normal TextBoxes and ComboBoxes as well. And is a good solution if you don't want to have to use a separate control or edit the ControlTemplate of an existing one.