A quick search of Apple's Human Interface Guidelines and Developer Library yields an unequivocal guideline:
Users, and not apps, place menu bar extras in the menu bar.
Anecdotal data backs that up: submitting an app where - upon quit of a dock process/main view, the extra is left running - yields a tidy rejection.
Now - I'm a User experience designer (UXD) who typically plays, I mean, works in the mobile and web space. So please pardon my lack of Obj C chops, thanks.
I understand well the guideline and behavior/pattern: apps like Skitch, Wunderlist, Evernote, et al however very clearly leave the extra (often termed HelperApp) running in the menu bar on quit of main app. They all, do offer explicit user toggle of this w/i preferences.
There's no additional Human Interface Guidelines w/ specifics around handling this requirement for user control. Must this be included in onboarding? Dialog at 1st quit? Again: I can speak to best behavior UX wise, but my (very senior) dev wants the mandate - how are others not getting rejected?
Focus: what means of user control is/are mandated to avoid rejection?
Known/given: include in preferences
Other: ???
After hours of searching online and Apple Dev guidelines, I humbly bring this question here. There simply isn't time to play a carnival game of requirements: guess, get rejected, repeat. Thanks in advance.
Do you have a button somewhere in your user interface that adds the menu extra to the menu bar? Or does your app just do it automatically without the user telling it to do so?
I think that's the distinction, your app must only add an extra when instructed to do so. Also if the primary purpose of your app is to create a menu extra (eg, I have one that puts a calendar in the menu bar) then just launching the app is an implicit instruction, so it can be added automatically.
Ultimately, this rule really is vague and can't be clarified. What it comes down to, is that there should not be many menu extras in a user's menu bar unless the user explicitly chooses to have them. So unless your app really needs a menu extra, you must disable it by default.
If you think the reviewer should have allowed your app through then reply to the rejection explaining your position. I've had an app change to approved once after doing that.
If they still reject your app, then you can appeal the app rejection.
Alternatively, just disable the menu extra by default and have a button somewhere to add it to the menu bar.
Also, all of this assumes you are using NSStatusItem and not the "real" menu extra system — which is a private API. Only NSStatusItem menu extras can be placed in the app store as far as I know.
Related
My OSX app lives entirely in the menu bar, and thus does not have a conventional "main window" with a close button nor a standard system menu. The app was rejected due to lack of compliance with the HIG: "we have found there is no way to quit the app." Of course, the Cntrl+Q hotkey works, but that's besides the point. To clarify, here's what my app looks like: http://airgif.com/images/mordor.png
The question is: what is the preferred method for implementing a quit button in a menu-bar app? Is it sufficient to simply have a NSButton with the title of "quit app" somewhere within the app's settings?
The usual approach is just to have a quit command at the bottom of the menu.
From the Beginning of Time, Apple has enforced the Human Interface Guidelines.
A way for the user to quit the app is required.
After all, we don’t want OSX to look like some webpages with popups you can’t get rid of.
I am developing an app that allows the user to make certain changes to tiles on the Windows 8 start screen. When a change has been made within the app, the user will be shown a "View my changes" button. Clicking the button should bring the user back to the start screen.
I have looked into different ways of closing/suspending the app programmatically (and thus taking the user to the start screen), but I have not found a way to achieve this using WinJS. Throwing an exception closes the app, but this seems like a very dirty workaround. Any suggestions?
I'm assuming you are creating secondary tiles and want to show the users what they look like? #mydogisbox is right in that this kind of functionality has probably been deliberatly excluded.
I'd recommend to just do an in-app 'view changes' of whatever changes to secondary tiles the user might have made. In general, I'd argue that this would be a better user experience because you will keep the user engaged within your application and not be essentially kicking them out of the experience.
The built in battery, wi-fi, sound, etc, Apple supplied status items, can be dragged to any position on the menu by using cmd + click and drag:
How can I support similar functionality in my own status item?
There are two ways to get menus on the right side of the menu bar. The officially supported way is creating an NSStatusItem in your app. The other ways is creating an NSMenuExtra. You've noticed one difference: NSStatusItem menus are fixed in place, whereas the menu extras can be moved around by cmd-dragging them.
The other major difference, and the reason 3rd-party menu extras are not officially supported, is that unlike status items (which run as separate applications), menu extras are loaded into the address space of the SystemUIServer process. That means if they go haywire and crash, they can take down the UI.
You can see the Menu Extras installed on your system at /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras. It may still be possible to create your own and have the OS load them, but you will run into problems if you try to ship the result. Better to go to bugreport.apple.com and let them know that NSStatusItems ought to be draggable.
Wikipedia has more info on Menu Extras, including some links to a tutorial on building your own.
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 using (a school modified version of) the "Squeak By Example" (SBE) image for a OOP/OOD class. However, my System Browser is missing a few features that appear in SBE. I assume there are some configuration options that can get them back for me, but I can't find them yet.
My questions are:
1) How do I get the buttons back? In the bottom pane there should be a bunch of button (browse, senders, implementors, versions, ..., source). My buttons are missing.
2) How do I get the small workspace area above the buttons to appear? There is supposed to be an area that I can type in, below the top panes, and above the buttons, but it doesn't appear.
Thanks in advance!
Robert
Edit - I did fool around in the Preferences Browser and tried a lot of settings. I managed to make the buttons come back and then later got that small (unknown name) workspace pane back, but I have no idea how. I have tried to systematically turn stuff off again to find out what setting(s) controlled what, but I was unable to determine what controlled either problem. So even though I have it working, I would like some squeak/smalltalk knowledgeable person to let me know how to control these as it might help me learn...
"In the bottom pane there should be a bunch of button (browse, senders, implementors, versions, ..., source). " -- switch on the optionalButtons preference in the preferences browser.
The "area that I can type in, below the top panes, and above the buttons, but it doesn't appear" sounds like the annotation pane - this gives you summary information about the method you're currently viewing, and it's controlled by the annotationPanes preference. Alternatively you may be referring to the Mercury Panel which is used for fast navigation to other classes and methods; this is (of course :-) controlled by the mercuryPanel preference.
If you've been messing around, you may also find that you now have an incorrect system browser selected. Squeak has a choice of browsers which can act as the System Browser. You can choose between them by clicking the menu button on the System Browser and selecting "Choose new default Browser". Open a new browser window to see what effect this has had.
You may also want to try a Pharo image which has everything configured the way you want by default.
Do you have access to the Preferences Browser? It should be in the main system menu. You can alter all sorts of things via this browser, including which buttons appear in teh system browser?