21.4 Adding a Tab to the Main UI (User Interface)

One of the most common functions added with a 3rd party plug-in is the ability to add a tab to the main UI of the interface. This allows you to place your own tab beside the Home, Tools, and Personal tabs and provide additional functionality similar to the way the Home tab works when that tab is selected.

The ITabProvider interface is responsible for allowing you to add your tab to the UI. The following methods are available.

ITabProvider

Tabs: The tab method also passes a form to your implementation. It is important that you cache this form, as it is a reference to the main window in Tradepoint. This can be used to ensure that any forms that you wish to create as a result of buttons being clicked etc. will be completely integrated into the Tradepoint software using the form.MDIParent property.  You should return an array of Dotnetbar RibbonTabItems from this function, or an empty array if you do not plan on adding any tabs.

Tip:  To create a ribbontabitem the easiest way is to create a form in your plug-in, and add a Dotnetbar Ribbon to that form and create a tab on the ribbon with your graphical elements and buttons available.  You can then pass that item back within your interface.

SetSecurity: This method allows you to override the default security for your new tab. To get at the current security settings of the logged in user, please use Tradepoint.API.CurrentUser for details.