OutlookBar for WPF & Silverlight

A while ago, I wrote a CodeProject article on how to re-style a TabControl to look like the Outlook navigation bar/pane… The article had a good response and loads of people were asking for a Silverlight version. I decided to take the stripped down version of that control (without all the theme stuff) and create a custom control that does this out of the box! I then spend some time to make sure that it works in WPF & Silverlight.

To use it is extremely easy, just create a new OutlookBar.

<ob:OutlookBar>    
</ob:OutlookBar>  

And manually add new OutlookBarItems:

<ob:OutlookBar>
    <ob:OutlookBarItem Title="Blue (Title)" Header="Blue">
        <Border Background="Blue">
            <TextBlock Text="Blue" />
        </Border>
    </ob:OutlookBarItem>
    <ob:OutlookBarItem Title="Yellow (Title)" Header="Yellow">
        <Border Background="Yellow">
            <TextBlock Text="Yellow" />
        </Border>
    </ob:OutlookBarItem>
    <ob:OutlookBarItem Title="Lime (Title)" Header="Lime">
        <Border Background="Lime">
            <TextBlock Text="Lime" />
        </Border>
    </ob:OutlookBarItem>
</ob:OutlookBar>  

This control can also be data-bound (because it derives from ItemsControl) and is 100% MVVM-able.

P.S.: I will also be releasing some default themes for it pretty soon!!!

Here is the source.

CodeProject