dotnet / dotnet/maui

Windows Desktop MenuBarItems displayed inside a tabbed page needs to display inside main toolbar

Open
#8,576 1 comment 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

area-controls-menubar platform/windows proposal/open t/desktop t/enhancement ☀️
Dominant language
C#
Stars
23.3k
Forks
2k
Avg merge
1d 14h
Merged PRs (30d)
296

Description

Description

When displaying MenubarItems inside a tabbed page, in a desktop application, it would be better do display them on the main toolbar left-hand-side, as for a single page.

Currently, if the menu items are inside a Tabbed page, they display inside a "mini" toolbar created on the right-hand side of the main toolbar, and the menu items are displayed all compressed there.
The tabs are also displayed in the same main toolbar.

This is how they display on a single page (fine and expected)

Expected

This is how they displays in a tabbed page (not fine and very much unexpected)

NotExpected

It is not fine since it confuses the user for they do not expects the menus (1) to move away from their default locations. It takes away a lot from UI intuitivity. The title displayed is also displays the wrong text (2). It should not be the name of the active Tab.

Here is a suggested layout (very rough but brings over the point). It creates a toolbar just for the menu items (2), and a second toolbar for the tabs (very much like you'd expect in a WinForm situation)(1), the correct title gets displayed in the centre (3) and if there are secondary ToolBarItems, display them here (4)

Preferred

Public API Changes

N/A

Intended Use-Case

I'd like desktop apps to look more like WinForm apps, especially when using tabbed pages

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the .NET MAUI desktop handling for MenuBarItems within a TabbedPage and compare it with the single-page toolbar behavior shown in the issue screenshots. Trace how the tab toolbar, menu items, title, and secondary ToolbarItems are arranged; done means tabbed desktop pages place menus and tabs in the requested separate toolbar layout with the correct title.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.