The first time I saw the html source of a page with the Ribbon control my mouth started to water thinking about all the possibilities. First the ribbon is rendered as an html list. No tables. So tweaking the styling of this is super easy. Also I have implemented some drag and drop functionality using jQuery and jQuery UI and the most common html I worked with was a html list. Most of the things going through my mind right now are just cool visual effects in that area but having that much control is going to allow for some pretty cool functionality with the ribbon.

Besides jQuery and Javascript there is a built-in way to add elements to the Ribbon control. You simply create a feature and a RibbonButton.xml file. Since I haven’t had too much time with the Beta take a look at this post for more details:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jfrost/archive/2009/11/06/adding-custom-button-to-the-sharepoint-2010-ribbon.aspx

I obtained the information in this post from Elisabeth Olson’s UI Presentation at the SharePoint 2009 Conference.