In my OSX Project I want to:
identify the Desktop (one of the expose Spaces) where a NSWindow resides;
open a NSWindow in a determined Space, not only on current Space.
Is there a way to do these simple tasks?
Exploring the documentation (NSWindowController, NSWindow, NSScreen) I can't find anything regarding multiple Desktop Management.
Thanks in advance!
You'd think there would be some API for working with Spaces, but there really isn't. You can use CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo to determine which Space a particular window is on, but there's no easy way to open a particular window on a specific space.
There is private API to move windows between spaces, of course. Whether you want to use this in your application depends on your needs - you couldn't use it on a Mac App Store application, obviously.
Found a copy-of-a-copy of the reverse-engineered header I was looking for:
https://gist.github.com/rjw57/5495406
Related
As a OS X user, you must be quite familiar with the "New Documents" window when you start some Apple's apps, like Pages.
This window is so common, that I thought it must be some system-provided window, am I right?
I tried to mimic the window, and it turns out to be quite tedious. As a developer, I have to first create a finder-like browser view with list-style selection support. Also, iCloud integration is quite difficult not to mention search support.
So, my question is how can I implement this window, is there any documentation writing about this window? Big thanks!
Look at NSDocument. That is Apple's suggested way of creating document-based apps. You create a subclass of NSDocument to handle tasks specific to your data format, and the superclass handles all the heavy lifting, including iCloud support. I haven't used it myself, but I know that it handles open and save chores, so that's probably where the panel is coming from.
As it turns out, to get this window, all I need to do is to enable iCloud support in Capabilities tab of project properties page.
A little heads up: doesn't work for Swift in Xcode6 Beta. I don't know why to be frankly. And it took me a day to searching around...
In the above image some processes have "icons" beside their names. What characteristic must a process meet to have an "icon" beside its name? Note the defining characteristic is not simply being in the Applications folder since several processes location in the Applications folder don't have the icon.
In addition how can I check if a PID meets the defining criteria in Objective-C? (Using Cocoa on OSX)
I think only applications that appear with their icon in the dock when you open them do have an icon in the activity monitor.
Applications that have "checked in" with Launch Services as a UI app get icons. Technically speaking, anything that ends up calling LSApplicationCheckIn will get one, but that's not a call you can make yourself.
If you run a standard NSRunLoop, or even initialize NSApplication ([NSApplication sharedApplication]) you should get it.
My question is: what are you doing that you're not getting it?
I've seen in some applications the control in these shots that is used to enter key shortcuts. I'd like to know if these are standard (available to everyone) or if these were built by the application's developer. I don't think it is the latter because I've seen this in many apps from different developers. Here are the images:
To give one example of an app try Bowtie, though I know there's more that use this.
If this control is standard, could you tell me how to use it (what class, etc)?
The first one appears to be Shortcut Recorder from Waffle Software.
Note that the use of a rounded text field for this, while somewhat established, the HIG reserves the rounded appearance for search fields.
How would I go about locking a screen like Keychain does, meaning preventing all access to Dock, menubar, desktop, etc. Basically just a black screen that I can add a password field to, for the user to return to the desktop? I am well aware of the Carbon method, but I want the NSApplication method because this is an all Cocoa application.
Thanks~
If you can get away with not writing this code yourself, all for the better. It is usually a terrible idea to write your own code to lock the screen, considering the number of vulnerabilities that have been found in screen locking code over the years. If you have a Carbon call that can do it, go ahead and use that... don't worry about the "purity" of your Cocoa code.
However, if you decide to write this yourself, here's what you do:
First, capture all the screens using CoreGraphics. See: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/QuartzDisplayServicesConceptual/Articles/DisplayCapture.html
Next, create a new NSWindow and put it in front of the window that's used for capturing the screens. You'll have to call a CG function to get the "order" of the black window covering each screen, and order the new window in front of that. Normally, the black window has an order so far forward that everything is behind it. Put a password field in the window. Do NOT use an ordinary text field or write your own code for password input. The password input field has a ton of special code in it so you can't copy text out of it, and other programs can't listen to keystrokes while you're typing into a password field. So use the one that Apple provides.
Last, put the computer in "kiosk mode". This mode allows you to disable alt-tab, user switching, the menubar and dock, and even the ability to force quit. See: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/KioskMode/Introduction/Introduction.html
It's not a lot of code, it just uses a few different APIs so you'll spend most of your time bouncing between API docs. I suggest writing the screen lock code as its own application (just add a new application target to your Xcode project) and then put the screen locker inside your application bundle. This used to be (as of 10.4) how Apple Remote Desktop implemented the "Lock Screen" functionality, but I can't find the app anymore.
I believe the Cocoa replacement to the SetSystemUIMode API was not introduced until 10.6.
If you can live with Snow-Leopard-only code, the answer is - setPresentationOptions: on NSApplication.
I am a newbie in Mac application development. I want to write a GUI application in Cocoa using Interface Builder. I want multiple screens i.e. when one button on a screen is clicked, another screen should be displayed. How can I activate a new screen at button click event?
I would heartily recommend Aaron Hilegass's book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. It took me from feeling like everything was impossible to being relatively competent in the space of a few short weeks. I was very impressed with it.
Apple's documentation is amazingly good, but it takes a while to get used to the style, and you will need to know which objects actually exist before you can look up how to use them, which is where Aaron's book comes in.
Your library may have a copy of it, or be able to order one for you if they don't.
I think you mean windows, not screens. Screens are the displays (monitors) on which all the user's windows from all the user's applications appear.
And I second Jonathan's recommendation of the Hillegass book.
The button has a target. That should link to the new window. As its action you can tell the window to show itself.
Take a look at:
http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Conceptual/WinPanel/WinPanel.html
I think what you want is the type of interface like that seen in Coda, or System Preferences where there is a toolbar on the top of the screen that can be used to select between the content of the window.
The simplest method I have found is to use BWToolkit.
Another method is to use a series of views, and switch between them when the toolbar is clicked. I've found one description here, but that's not the one I used first (which may have been originally in Ruby Cocoa, IIRC).
NSTabView.