Tabs Studio Blog (organizing Visual Studio document tabs)

Trying to reduce necessity to manually craft a XAML style, I’ve added presentation parameters and tab coloring rules to Tabs Studio. While a custom XAML style allows seamless integration of different visual adornments together, it takes some time to make it right. Presentation parameters are a new layer between a default style and a custom style. It implements most common style options thus simplifying a custom XAML style.

Presentation is a new tab in Tabs Studio options and it replaces the Quick Style dialog. Font size, Close tab button style and Animation are now presentation options instead of a part of Quick Style generated style. Selected tab style, Previously selected tab and Non-document tab options from the old Quick Style dialog can now be represented as tab coloring rules:

Presentation parameters

Selected tab style XP rule

Previously selected tab rule

Non-document tab rule

A tab coloring rule has 5 filtering options and a definition for a tab background brush. Checked boolean options apply the rule to tabs with the corresponding property set to True (e.g. IsTabSelected), unchecked – to False and undefined – to all tabs. Regular expression options apply Regex.IsMatch with the corresponding property (e.g. TabName) when the regex is not empty (see Regular Expression Language Elements MSDN page for .NET regular expressions details).

Two more examples. The Forms rule applies to tabs with the name starting from Form when this tab is not selected and not previously selected. The WindowsFormsApplication1 project rule applies when tab’s project name contains WindowsFormsApplication1 and tab name doesn’t start from Form.

Forms rule

WindowsFormsApplication1 project rule

Tab background definition must be a Brush descendant. Different options to specify a color in XAML are listed on the Color documentation page.

Everything that presentation parameters do can be achieved in a XAML style. For example, the following style is equivalent to what a tab coloring rule generates internally:

<Style TargetType="TabsStudio:Tab" BasedOn="{StaticResource DefaultTabStyle}">
    <Style.Triggers>
        <MultiDataTrigger>
            <MultiDataTrigger.Conditions>
                <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=IsTabSelected, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}" Value="False"/>
                <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=IsPreviouslySelectedTab, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}" Value="False"/>
                <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=IsDocument, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}" Value="True"/>
                <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=TabName, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}, 
                		Converter={StaticResource RegexMatch},ConverterParameter='^Class'}" Value="True"/>
                <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=ProjectName, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}, 
                		Converter={StaticResource RegexMatch},ConverterParameter='^Windows'}" Value="True"/>
            </MultiDataTrigger.Conditions>
            <Setter Property="Background">
                <Setter.Value>
                     <SolidColorBrush Color="Red"/>
                </Setter.Value>
            </Setter>  
        </MultiDataTrigger>
    </Style.Triggers>
</Style>

There is one more convenience feature to set tab color. On the right click context menu there is now the Set color… command:

Set color context menu command

When adding a new rule using this command the options are pre-populated with the tab item parameters and when a matching rule(s) already exists then the Set Color choice dialog is presented:

Set color choce dialog

Download link: TabsStudio v2.1.6.