About the *ugly* wxToolbar, or wxAuiToolBar, May be the best replaced is: wxRibbonToolBar !
See http://docs.wxwidgets.org/trunk/group__group__class__ribbon.html for more information.
Or: http://www.corsix.org/gsoc/ribbon.html
Any comments?
Ribbons and IDEs haven't mixed so well in the past.
There was a project for converting Eclipse into a ribbon-based UI, but it was abandoned.
Even for it to be accomplished in an intuitive and non-obtrusive manner, a lot of concessions would have to be made. For example, one has to make sure that the screen space isn't taken so aggressively (in low resolutions, almost one third of the screen height can be usurped by the ribbon!), since it is important to give priority to the editor. Another thing to keep in mind is that a ribbonbar cannot be limited to being a toolbar on steroids.
I have been working on an IDE (for D rather than C++), but I did come accross a few challenges on how to adapt the ribbon to become useful in the context of an IDE. You can see
here a demo video showing my early attempts, and also showing something that most ribbon based applications lack: an option to revert to the classic menu-toolbar interface. Notice how I tried to optimize the used space by embedding the log window, although this is not a completely satisfactory compromise either.
This is not a discouragement, but rather a warning that adopting a ribbon interface involves a lot of UI redesign challenges. Especially for IDEs, and especially considering that most programmers would resist such a change.
