In a document based Cocoa app (Apples TextEdit sample as base code) I need one separate window which must be initated at launchtime and closes when app terminates. This window should be in a separate NIB and accessible by a menu to hide and bring it to front again.
I read about NSWindows and NSWindowcontrollers but did not find a proper solution for my mixed approach of a document based app with a permanent non-doc-window
So I have two questions on that approach :
1. How to init a non-doc window at launchtime ?
2. How to connect a menu with open/close action to that window ?
I answer my question myself :
Willeke pointed me to the right direction. The TextEdit preference window is similiar to what I want, so I looked in the TextEdit sample and followed the code. And the solution to second question (make the window visible at launch) was very simple too.
In the subclass of the windowController is this method :
- (id)init {
self = [super initWithWindowNibName: #"sampleWindow"];
if (self) {
[self showWindow:self];
}
return self ;
}
All I had to do is to call showWindow:
Now the window always opens when the app launches. Easy ...
Related
I am sorry if this seems trivial, but I am sure its a reasonable question to ask here.
I worked a lot around the NSWindowController class, and it seems the only way to get it
to work fully (for my purpose), is by creating a new xib-file along with it.
My question is, would it be somehow feasible to work with MainMenu.xib and the NSWindowController class and an instantiated object controller, to get interaction with the windows' content. So far without xib the only code segments getting executed are within awakeFromNib. The purpose being, I want to save xib-file space, complexity and have it easily integrate with a bigger project. Just fyi this is not a document-based project.
Should I choose a different subclass of NSObject other than NSWindowController? Or is it not possible?
The code required to run for the class to be working fully is as follows:
- (void) tableViewSelectionDidChange:(NSNotification *)notification
{
NSInteger selectedRow = [logsTableView selectedRow];
if ([directoryList containsObject:[directoryList objectAtIndex:selectedRow]])
{
NSString *logContent = [NSString stringWithContentsOfFile:[directoryList objectAtIndex:selectedRow]
encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding
error:NULL];
if (logContent != NULL)
{
[logsTextView setString:logContent];
} else
{
[logsTextView setString:#"No permission to read log"];
}
}
}
NSWindowController usually wants to create the window it controls, which means you either need to give it a XIB file that contains the window to create or override the various window creation methods to customize the window in code. So it's probably not feasible to use an already-instantiated window from a different XIB with your NSWindowController.
That said, I almost always create a a XIB and an NSWindowController subclass for every window in my apps. Even the preferences window gets its own window controller class. The only exception would be extremely simple windows, but even now I'm struggling to think of a good example.
Your method isn't being called because window controller instance isn't set as the table view's delegate. The typical pattern here is to create your window in a XIB, set your window controller as the custom class of the File's Owner object, and then hook up the table view's delegate and dataSource outlets to File's Owner. This makes your window controller the table view's data source and delegate, and the connections will be established automatically when the XIB is loaded.
I'm using addGlobalMonitorForEventsMatchingMask to listen to events in Cocoa:
[NSEvent addGlobalMonitorForEventsMatchingMask:NSLeftMouseDraggedMask
handler:^(NSEvent *event) {
NSLog(#"Dragged...");
}];
Though I would like to know if I'm dragging/moving a window (and which window that is, I can find the focused window though when holding command and dragging a window it doesn't get focus as far as I know.)
So, can I detect whether or not I'm dragging a window?
Update:
I now have a class: "SATest : NSObject <NSWindowDelegate>" in which I implement the windowDidMove method (and later perhaps windowWillMove too.) Though, now the next step would be attaching this to a window, right? So my question now is: How do I attach the delegate to all windows of all apps?
Update 2:
I now can find a list of all open windows on the screen:
AXUIElementRef _systemWideElement;
_systemWideElement = AXUIElementCreateSystemWide();
CFArrayRef _windows;
AXUIElementCopyAttributeValues(_systemWideElement, kAXWindowsAttribute, 0, 100, &_windows);
Now I have to iterate over the windows, and of each get it's NSWindow so I can add my delegate to it: [window setDelegate:self];
Update 3: To be clear, this question is about detecting the dragging of ALL windows of ALL apps. Not only the windows of my own app.
Also, I'm very new to this event and window management stuff, so no need to keep your answer short I'm happy to read a lot :P
Thanks!
-P
To find out if a window is being dragged you need to have an object that acts as the delegate of the window by responding to the following messages of the NSWindowDelegate protocol:
windowWillMove - this tells the delegate that the window is about to move.
windowDidMove - this tells the delegate that the window has moved.
You can retrieve the NSWindow object in question by sending object to the notification parameter sent to these methods:
e.g.
NSWindow draggedWindow = [notification object];
More information can be found here.
Update:
In response to your request about getting this information for all windows the NSApplication class provides a method which returns an array of all windows owned by the application. The typical way of getting this information is to use one of the NSApplicationDelegate methods to get a reference to your application object.
For example, in your app delegate (pseudocode):
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)aNotification
{
NSApplication * app = [aNotification object];
// you now have a reference to your application.
// and can iterate over the collection of windows and call
// [window setDelegate:self]; for each window.
}
Note that you will need to add / remove you delegates as windows are added and removed. The best method for doing this is – applicationDidUpdate:.
This should be enough to get you started solving your problem.
As suggested by Benjamin the answer lies in the accessibility API. I was looking around in this for a while, even before I asked this question, but never got it to do what I wanted. I now have found a pretty nice solution.
At a high-level I do the following:
Listen to the mouse down event and remember both on which window you clicked and it's location.
Listen to the mouse up event and check if the location has changed, if so you know you moved a window
You can do something similar for the size if you also want to know if you resized. There might be a better solution, but after days of trying stuff this is the only way I got it to work the way I wanted.
Hope this helps anyone who was looking for something similar.
-Pablo
Here's my situation:
I've written a simple web browser. Tabbed browsing was easy enough to get working once I wrapped my head around the concepts and figured how to perform operations on specific tabs. It works well and is pretty reliable under most circumstances.
A problem has plagued me, however, and I cannot figure out its cause.
Let's say I open a new tab and navigate to YouTube. I click on a video and the flash player loads. The video plays and all works fine. I now create another new tab and navigate to some site. The audio from the youtube player stops completely.
When I switch back to the youtube tab, the page will all still be there just as it was except the player has to reload completely, as if I had just reloaded the page. This seems to apply to other plugin types as well.
What's causing this?
Garbage collection is not enabled and as far as I know I'm creating the web views properly. Is there some silly, simple little thing that I missed somewhere along the line?
The - (void)setHostWindow:(NSWindow *)hostWindow method on WebView is probably what you're looking for.
I had the same problem with the flash in a WebView reloading whenever the syle mask of the enclosing window was changed. Wrapping the call to setStyleMask fixed the problem, as follows:
NSWindow *hostWindow = [[NSWindow alloc] init];
[self.webView setHostWindow:hostWindow];
[[self windowForSheet] setStyleMask:styleMask];
[self.webView setHostWindow:nil];
[hostWindow release];
The documentation for the method isn't stellar, but it does explicitly state a having a WebView inside a NSTabView as one of the use cases:
This method sets the receiver’s host window to hostWindow. Your application should only use this method if a web view is going to be removed from its window temporarily, and you want the web view to continue operating (for example, you don’t want to interrupt a load in progress). Since the receiver retains hostWindow, it is your responsibility to set the host window to nil before closing the window to avoid a retain loop.
For example, you might invoke this method if you attach a web view to an NSTabView object (as in a tabbed browser implementation). The NSTabView object takes views out of the window when they are not in the active tab, so you need to invoke this method before the web view is removed from its window. If you don't invoke this method, plug-ins will stop operating when the web view is removed from its window.
I had a similar problem but with a window with a webView that is closed and restored. Unfortunately the solution by #mlwelles did not solve the problem alone.
What did solve however is removing the webView from the window before it closes (proper "timing" is important). What I came up with is something like this:
id contentView;
id tmpHostWindow;
[window setDelegate:self];
- (BOOL)windowShouldClose:(NSNotification *)notification
{
// set temporary hostWindow on WebView and remove it from
// the closed window to prevent stopping flash plugin
// (windowWillClose would be better but that doesn't always work)
tmpHostWindow = [[NSWindow alloc] init];
[webView setHostWindow:tmpHostWindow];
[window setContentView:nil];
[contentView removeFromSuperview];
return TRUE;
}
- (void)windowDidBecomeKey:(NSNotification *)notification
{
// restore "hidden" webview
// (would be better to do it in applicationShouldHandleReopen
// but that seems to be too early (has no effect)
if ([window contentView] != contentView) {
[window setContentView:contentView];
[webView setHostWindow:nil];
tmpHostWindow = nil;
}
}
I have created a fairly simple screensaver that runs on Mac OS 10.6.5 without issue.
The configuration screen has accumulated quite a few different options and I'm trying to implement my own preview on the configureSheet window so the user (just me, currently) can immediately see the effect of a change without having to OK and Test each change.
I've added an NSView to the configureSheet and set the custom class in Interface Builder to my ScreenSaverView subclass. I know that drawRect: is firing, because I can remove the condition for clearing the view to black, and my custom preview no longer appears with the black background.
Here is that function (based on several fine tutorials on the Internet):
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)rect
{
if ( shouldDrawBackground )
{
[super drawRect:rect];
shouldDrawBackground = NO;
}
if (pausing == NO)
[spiroForm drawForm];
}
The spiroForm class simply draws itself into the ScreenSaverView frame using NSBezierPath and, as mentioned, is not problematical for the actual screensaver or the built-in System Preferences preview. The custom preview (configureView) frame is passed into the init method for, um, itself (since its custom class is my ScreenSaverView subclass.) The -initWithFrame method is called in configureSheet before returning the configureSheet object to the OS:
[configureView initWithFrame:[configureView bounds] isPreview:YES];
Maybe I don't have to do that? It was just something I tried to see if it was required for drawing.
I eventually added a delegate to the configureSheet to try triggering the startAnimation and stopAnimation functions of my preview via windowWillBeginSheet and windowWillEndSheet notifications, but those don't appear to be getting called for some reason. The delegate is declared as NSObject <NSWindowDelegate> and I set the delegate in the configureSheet method before returning the configureSheet object.
I've been working on this for days, but haven't been able to find anything about how the OS manages the ScreenSaverView objects (which I think is what I'm trying to emulate by running my own copy.)
Does anybody have any suggestions on how to manage this or if Apple documents it somewhere that I haven't found? This isn't really required for the screensaver to work, I just think it would be fun (I also looked for a way to use the OS preview, but it's blocked while the configureSheet is activated.)
OK, there are a couple of 'duh' moments involved with the solution:
First of all, I was setting the delegate for the sheet notifications to the sheet itself. The window that the sheet belongs to gets the notifications.
Secondly, that very window that the sheet belongs to is owned by System Preferences, I don't see any way to set my delegate class as a delegate to that window, so the whole delegate thing doesn't appear to be a viable solution.
I ended up subclassing NSWindow for the configureSheet so that I could start and stop animation on my preview by over-riding the makeKeyWindow and close methods.
- (void) makeKeyWindow
{
if (myPreview != nil)
if ( ! [myPreview isAnimating])
{
[myPreview startAnimation];
}
[super makeKeyWindow];
}
I also had to add an IBOutlet for my preview object itself and connect it in Interface Builder.
Still working out a couple of issues, but now when I click on my screensaver Options button, my configureSheet drops down and displays its own preview while you set options. Sheesh. The hoops I jump through for these little niceties. Anyway, I like it. Onward and upward.
I'm having an issue with creating new windows in Cocoa.
Hypothetically speaking, let's say I have "WindowA" and has a button called "myButton".
When you click on "myButton", it runs this code in the following class file:
-(void)openFile2:(id)sender
{
myNextWindow = [[TestWindowController alloc] initWithWindowNibName:#"MainMenu"];
NSString *testString = #"foo";
[myNextWindow showWindow:self];
[myNextWindow setButtonText:testString];
}
The code in a nutshell makes a duplicate "WindowA" and shows it. As you can see, this code also runs a method called 'setButtonText', which is this:
- (void)setButtonText:(NSString *)passedText
{
[myButton setTitle:passedText];
}
The problem is that when I call this method locally, in the original window - the button text changes (e.g., [self setButtonText:testString]) it works. However, it does not work in the newly created window (e.g., [myNextWindow setButtonText:testString];)
When I debug the newly created window, step by step, the 'myButton' value it gives is 0x0. Do I have to manually assign controllers/delegates to the new window? I think the 'myButton' in the code isn't associated to the 'myButton' in the newly created window.
How would I fix this problem?
The first problem is that you are loading the MainMenu NIB/XIB repeatedly. That will do Very Bad Things -- the MainMenu should only be loaded once at application startup.
You want to break out any UI that needs to be loaded repeatedly into a separate NIB/XIB file (the same way a document based application has a MainMenu.xib and Document.xib files).
To properly do this, you need to understand the concept of "File's Owner" and how to leverage it properly. Note that there is also overlap with window controllers and understanding those, if you want to use them, will be helpful.