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Visual Studio 2012 and Office 2013 have in my opinion an amazing GUI. Are they built with some Microsoft library which is publicly accessible and usable; if so which one?

Jeroen
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  • Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it. –  Dec 07 '13 at 16:45
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    @H2CO3 I'm not asking to recommend or find a library, I'm asking what library these programs use. – Jeroen Dec 07 '13 at 16:48
  • "I'm not asking to [...] find a library, I'm asking what library these programs use." - don't you feel just a *little bit* of contradiction in that sentence? Asking what library the program uses === asking others to find the library for you. –  Dec 07 '13 at 16:55
  • @H2CO3 I'm pretty sure with finding a library, it's suggesting "finding a library suitable for a specific use", which indeed would be opinion based. I am however, asking an answer to a clear programming related question with no possible subjective answers. – Jeroen Dec 07 '13 at 16:57
  • possible duplicate of [How do I create an attractive GUI in C#?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5050397/how-do-i-create-an-attractive-gui-in-c) – CodaFi Dec 07 '13 at 17:15
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    Visual Studio is just using WPF, so theming is easy. Office on the other hand I believe are using their own internal UI framework so that they can enjoy a certain amount of flexibility when it comes to theming and controls in general. – The Muffin Man Aug 26 '15 at 18:52
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    I developed an MFC program a few years ago using the CMFC... controls. These controls were delivered to Microsoft by BCGSoft in 2007. But MS failed to maintain them because MS had gone over to XAML. I never could get my code to be bug free. Finally, I had to give up. MS only offered social media help. For my current MFC project I finally discovered BCGSoft controls for MFC and its wonderful. The CBCGP... controls all work, they are up to date with constant updates and improvements, they are bugless and they answer ALL of my tech questions and issues within 48 hours ALWAYS. – rtischer8277 Dec 22 '15 at 16:17

2 Answers2

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There is none. It's a custom Win32 C++ application with a ton of code.

The closest you can get without inventing your own controls is to create a Win32 application that uses the Windows Ribbon Framework. This is only officially accessible through plain Win32. The MFC and WPF versions are non-native look alikes. There is a .NET Windows Forms wrapper for the native Win32 Ribbon.

Monstieur
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If you are after a library to duplicate the ribbon functionality in your own application you could consider using WPF and use the Fluent Ribbon Control Suite. This is almost identical to the ribbon found in Office 2010 in my opinion.

Liam Flaherty
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