How can you add or replace a view within a view with code? I'm programming for OSX, not IOS.
I am using a drawer that utilizes a custom view. In the custom view I have two boxes, one with a custom set of icons that I want to stay static and another box that has the information related to that button. What I want to do is when a user clicks one of the buttons that the 2nd box view changes to reflect the info for that button.
For example, I have five buttons and the default 2nd box is "Info", if the user clicks the 2nd button in the first box view I want to change the 2nd box to be the "List" box instead while the 1st box with the buttons stays intact.
I'm not sure how this would impact constraints since while the first box is a fixed size, the 2nd box needs to be dynamic so that it fills in the "rest of the space" so that when the drawer size changes with the window size that the 2nd box is taking up the remaining real estate.
Thank you!
I have implemented such a scenario in the past using a tabless NSTabView, and an NSSegmentedControl (for the buttons). The NSTabView has it's -takeSelectedTabViewItemFromSender: action connected to the NSSegmentedControl, using Interface Builder.
In the Connections Inspector, this shows up like so:
This has the effect that the index of the selected NSTabViewItem in your NSTabView will correspond to the index of the selected segment in the NSSegmentedControl.
Related
I want a menu (hidden on the left side of my app) with a variable amount of buttons (depending on the user). I took the app over from another developer and he manually added every view and every button and it is a pain to maintain if you want to add another button in between or change something. So I want to redo it automatically.
But how can I achieve that? Let's say i have on the left x views, each containing an image, a button and a separator (to the button below). So I basically only create one single prototype view, button combo and reuse it for all other buttons. But how do I arrange them so the constraints are correctly set?
I would go with a table-view. Setup a cell with an image and a button, separators come for free in a table-view. Make sure the cell has a delegate for the button call-back or a closure to handle the button tap.
Add a controller/manager to control the number of views based on the user.
How to display show/Hide button in highlight regular mode of NSOutlineView?
I have a grop item at the top of NSOutlineview. I try to display show/hide button in that group item, but I can't find any method to do it. The source list mode can display it but regular mode doesn't.
Is it possible to display show/hide button in highlight regular mode of NSOutlineview?
thanks for helping
This behavior is specific to the source list appearance. There is no public API for getting around this, as it's an intentional enforcement (on Apple's part) of standardized appearances. You could dig around in the headers to look for a way to "hotwire" things, but use of private API bars you from distributing your app through the App Store.
The easier (non-private-API-using) route is to create your own cell view with a borderless button with show/hide title. Use a mouse tracking area (see NSTrackingArea) on the cell view (the superview of your button) to set the button's alpha (via its animator) to fade the button in/out on mouse in/out. Your button would tell the outline view to expand/collapse its cell view's represented item (the easiest way would be to define an outlet to the button via your custom NSView cell view class and configure the button's target/action when the cell view is created for the item).
I have a simple view hierarchy example.
Obviously the main view space is the primary space the user will interact with. At the bottom I have tabs that can pop up to indicate to the user where he/she is in the progression of the app. Normally, these tabs only take up the space indicated by the "Custom Tabs" rectangle at the bottom, but they can expand all the way up to fill the "Empty Space" box.
In order for the tabs to still be clickable, I had to make the tab view's frame the full rectangle containing both the "Custom Tabs" space and "Empty Space" space. What this results in is that "Empty Space" not being interactive to the user when the tabs aren't popped up, because the input is basically being consumed by that UIView, and not forwarded through the rest of the hierarchy.
I suppose the root of this problem is that both "Main View Space" and the "Empty Space + Custom Tabs" are both subviews of the main window.
Is there a way I can tell the system to forward the user input to the sibling views if the user didn't actively tap on an interactive element? For example, doing something with the touchesBegan, touchesEnded etc. methods that would indicate to the OS that this view did not use the input.
EDIT
Here's another version of the view, demonstrating the tate of one tab being open:
EDIT2
After some simple testing, it would seem that the default behavior is that the top most view gets the input first. This applies even if you have a clear UIView on top of a UITextField. The clear UIView will consume the input, preventing the UITextField from being editable
EDIT3
The way the tabs are supposed to work is the user can tap on a tab (sized as in the first picture), and then it will expand to display a thumbnail view associated with that tab (as in the second picture). The user can then optionally tap the tab once more to close it, and return the size to the original picture. In order for the tab to be clickable when it is open, I have to have the containing view be basically large enough to contain all 4 tabs as if they were open. This results in a lot of empty space in the containing view. This empty space results in essentially dead input space on the screen. If there were a button in the main view space that is covered by the empty space, the user would not be able to click on it. I would like to be able to avoid that behavior, and have that button covered by the empty space still be clickable.
Rather than trying to "forward" touches, I would modify your layout so that the tab view is only as big as the tabs, and change it's .frame to be the larger rectangle in code only when you need it. For example, when a tab is clicked:
CGRect tabFrame = tabView.bounds;
tabFrame.origin.y = top_of_emptySpace;
tabFrame.size.height = height_of_emptySpace + height_of_tabView;
tabView.frame = tabFrame;
then you can add the content you need. when you need it to go away, remove the content then do :
CGRect tabFrame = tabView.bounds;
tabFrame.origin.y = top_of_tabView;
tabFrame.size.height = height_of_tabView;
tabView.frame = tabFrame;
There might be some tweaking required to make the content show up as you like, but this way, when the tabs are minimized, you won't have to do anything extra to make the main view respond to touches correctly.
Ok, this is the way I would do it:
The RootViewController has two views, its main view which takes the whole screen, the one that is added to the window. And the tab view.
Then I would add another view controller (a UINavigationController ideally) to the RootViewController and I would have its view added as a subview of the RootViewController's view.
Any change performed, such as pushing new view controller or anything, would be done to the child view controller.
That way, your tab view would always be showing. To open a tab, you could create a new view that would show on top of the tab bar using an animation or something similar.
I have a form in a UIView which consist of multiple textfields, couple of textviews and two fields that are interacted with by the means of an invisible button overlaid on them. When you click on a textfield, the keyboard pops up for text entry and I added a toolbar on it for navigating to the previous and next data entry (whatever the data entry is, be it a textfield, textview or one of the two special cases that are interacted with a button). Now, when I navigate with between textfields with those buttons everything works fine. My scrollview's content moves along the element that becomes the firstresponder (with the help of a piece of code from stackoverflow that scrolls the view while taking into account the height of the keyboard that hides a good portion of it). Here is a visual example.
The problem arises when I want to switch out of a specific data entry (date) that interacts with a hidden button. I'll give some context first. Those data entries show datepickers (one for the date, another for the time) in action sheets, and those action sheets also have navigating button in a toolbar, like so.
The code from stackoverflow that readjust the view do so in the didBeginEditing delegate methods of the textfields and textviews, so when I assign them first responder the scrollview adjust itself while taking into account the keyboard.
This means that, in the case that I switch into a special data entry, I manually move the scrollview's content so I can view the next element. When I switch from a special entry into a textfield I assume that the previously mentioned code from stackoverflow kicks in and adjust the view. It actually does when I move from the hour data entry (which uses a datepicker in an actionsheet) into the next element which is a textfield. However, when I'm at the date data entry (which is directly before the hour data entry) and press previous to assign the first responder to the textfield above it, the scrollview goes way ahead the text field, like so.
What's important to note is that this problem only occurs when the textfield is not in view. This makes me suspect that I'm incorrectly using the code that readjust the view. For instance, there is a constant in the code that represents the height of the keyboard. I tried changing it from 216 to 260 (so it takes into account my toolbar added on top of the keyboard) but this results in strange black artifacts near the buttom that only occasionally appears.
I'm kind of lost in this bug, and my post is already pretty long. I've prepared an example of my problem in a new project, if any of you could take a look into it I'd be very appreciative.
Here it is
I have an NSPopUpButton providing the NSMenu for a status item with a custom view. The popup button displays a list of links. When the user selects a link from the list, the link is displayed in the user's browser (in the background).
Naturally, the menu closes every time the user selects a link.
I would like to change this: I want the menu to stay open while the user clicks on various links, all of which can be opened in the background. The menu can then go away when the user clicks elsewhere.
How can this be accomplished? Should I subclass NSMenuItem and intercept the mouse clicks somehow? Overlay a transparent NSView on the popped-up menu and, again, intercept the clicks somehow? I make these suggestions blithely, but I would have trouble implementing either of these...pointers to the right methods for override would be appreciated.
Instead of using a menu, one might use a collapsible box.I have seen that in many apps ( also provided by Apple) , so I guess this is the recommended style guide for multiple selections.
The collapsible box expands when you click the disclosure button, and it gives free all items desired - like a tableview with checkboxes.
Views below this box must move down in this case, not to interfere with the box.
Clicking again on the disclosure button will shrink the box back to its origin. The effect is similar to closing a menu.
Usually you should not bend a control too far past it's original intent. Users expect pop up buttons to close after making a selection. I don't think you should, or can, force NSPopUpButtonCell to behave in this way. If you do, you'll be subclassing and modifying the control so heavily that it might change/break with a future version of Mac OS X. You'd also have to worry about the usability problem of users thinking the menu will close after making a selection.
You might consider writing you're own subclass of NSView to work like the menu button you're describing. After the user clicks on the button. You'll want to create a new NSWindow, with no border by using NSBorderlessWindowMask as the style mask. The content view of that window should be another custom view of yours that you implement the menu selection in.