I can confirm that the problem reported in my previous posts has been definitely solved. This means that I will be able to use task panes in all my add-ins, maintaining the compatibility with previous versions (specially 2003, which is still the version used mostly by my clients).

I am thinking also in replicating the ribbon bar interface used by my add-ins in Office 2003 using a task pane.

I personally love the ribbon interface because it allows to group "task" related functions in a very logical and convenient way. Unfortunately I have not been able to take advantage of its full potential because that would have made my add-ins not compatible with previous versions.

For example, I don’t like the ribbon tab used in PowerTOC (shown below). I think that it can be improved substantially to make the application much more intuitive to use.

PowerTOC toolbar

Compare it with the ribbon of my latest add-in, which is about to enter beta testing, PowerMerge:

PowerMerge toolbar

And I am sure that I can still do better once I start taking advantage of the possibilities of the ribbon interface.

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