Building a Web RibbonBar with the WebBrowser Control in PowerBuilder

Building a Web RibbonBar with the WebBrowser Control in PowerBuilder

The native RibbonBar control in PowerBuilder, although functional, presents significant limitations regarding visual customization, dynamic themes, and extensibility. With the arrival of the Chromium WebBrowser (WebView2) control, the possibility opens up to build a Ribbon-type toolbar completely rendered in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, achieving a modern, responsive, and fully customizable appearance.

This article demonstrates how to build a reusable Web RibbonBar encapsulated in a User Object (u_wb_ribbon) that inherits from the webbrowser control. The component allows defining Tabs, Groups, and Buttons from pure PowerScript, serializing the structure to JSON, injecting it into the web DOM, and receiving back user click events—all using the native bidirectional communication of WebView2. All the complete explanations and comprehensive details can be found in the article: Building a Web RibbonBar with the WebBrowser Control in PowerBuilder.

Luis Avilan