Troubleshooting SharePoint 2010 Ribbon buttons

So,
While I was preparing to my presentation on SharePoint 2010 in Las Vegas next month, I wanted to show how to add some new cool buttons to the new ribbon menu.

I came across a lot of bloggers writing about this new feature (ribbon),
here is a nice how-to published by Sandeep K Nahta back at July:
http://snahta.blogspot.com/2009/07/add-button-to-ribbon.html

But what it does not say and took me a while to understand is few things that makes this not work according to plan...

1.

Keep in mind your feature must be at a site collection level otherwise it will not work.
Farm level will not load anything and site level will work in strange resutls like:
Adding the buttons twice, or if you activate it on 2 sites in the same collection - adding the buttons permanently even after you deactivate the feature and uninstall it.

2.

I wanted to name my actions SLFE.SomeAction (product code.actio name) for our SharePoint List Forms Extensions ( hence SLFE :) ), Now the buttons I added were disabled all the time. Took me a whilte to figure out that the action name must not containt special characters including ... so - keep that also in mind.

3.

The easiest way I found for adding buttons or groups into the existing ribbon is:

a

- find the location you want to add it in the existing ribbon definition file (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\GLOBAL\XML\CMDUI.XML)

b

- locate the XML node you wish to insert you XML addition, and keep it's ID value.

c

- simply inject your XML in your feature elements file to that node's children collection like so (note the CommandUI. and ._children in the custom action's location):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <CustomAction Id="KWizCom.SLFE.Ribbon.Library.Groups.SLFE" Location="CommandUI.Ribbon.Library.Groups._children" Sequence="2000" Title="SLFE">
    <CommandUIExtension>
      <CommandUIDefinitions>
        <CommandUIDefinition>
... XML as in the CUI schema ...
        </CommandUIDefinition>
      </CommandUIDefinitions>
    </CommandUIExtension>
  </CustomAction>
</Elements>

4.

If you don't see any buttons when you add a group - you must add "scaling" properties for that group!

Also - make sure your chosen template (i.e. Ribbon.Templates.Flexible) support your control's TemplateAlias (i.e. o1). Don't you just hate these XML cross references?!

I will post back here with more info on the ribbon as I find it, check back to update!

Thanks, Shai.