When a Ribbon group contains many buttons only some of the buttons can be seen

  • 7023001
  • 22-May-2018
  • 03-Jul-2018

Environment

Reflection Desktop (including Pro, for IBM, or for UNIX and OpenVMS) 16.0 or higher
Reflection 2014
Reflection Pro 2014
Reflection for IBM 2014
Reflection for UNIX and OpenVMS 2014
Reflection for IBM 2011
Reflection for UNIX and OpenVMS 2011
Reflection Standard Suite 2011

Situation

When a Ribbon group in Reflection Desktop contains a lot of buttons, only a couple of the buttons can be seen and there is no way to scroll left to see the rest of the buttons in the Group.  This problem occurs whether the buttons were added manually or imported from a legacy .r2w toolbar created in Reflection version 14.  If there are too many buttons in the Group to display on the Ribbon, then only the Group button displays on the Ribbon and then clicking the Group button displays the buttons below it, but the last button in the group displays directly below the Group button and the rest of the buttons display to the left of it, so most of them cannot be seen.

Resolution

If using Reflection Desktop 16.0:
        Upgrade to Reflection Desktop 16.0 SP1 HF17 or higher  (16.0.478)
If using Reflection Desktop 16.1:
        Upgrade to Reflection Desktop 16.1 SP1 or higher

A new checkbox option was added to the Reflection UI Designer group settings dialog called "Disable auto sizing".  This new checkbox option is unchecked by default to maintain backward compatibility for users of previous versions of Reflection.  When the option is checked it disables the ribbon bar button sizing functionality.  Reflection Desktop auto sizes the buttons on a ribbon bar group as the window is resized.  If all the buttons fit, they are shown in normal size.  If the width of the window, and hence the width of the ribbon bar group shrinks, the buttons are successively reduced to a smaller size, and ultimately an auto overflow button will display.  The auto overflow button can be pressed to display the buttons in a "tooltip-like" window.  If there are too many buttons to fit on the screen, then display problems can occur.  By disabling this option for a group, the buttons will not resize.  Instead, scroll bars will be displayed at either end of the ribbon bar group.  This is the same way button groups are displayed while in the Reflection UI Designer.  So, the user can select "Disable auto sizing" at design time if a group will contain an excessive amount of buttons.

A HotFix (HF) for Reflection Desktop is a cumulatively built product update, intended for limited distribution, which addresses specific customer issues and enhancement requests; outside the regular Development release cycle. It is only available to Micro Focus customers with current software support and maintenance contracts, and only after contacting Micro Focus Customer Support directly.  A HotFix undergoes limited stability and quality testing and is intended for quick release to address specific product issues and should not be deployed to production environments without thorough testing.  It is recommended to upgrade to a full-release or a Service Pack version of Reflection Desktop when it becomes available.