Add button to OSX lock screen - objective-c

Is it possible to alter the existing OSX lock screen ? For example if I wanted to add a button above the users profile image that says "Hello World" on click.. is this possible?
The goal is to run an AppleScript when the button is clicked.
EDIT -
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/LoginUIKit.framework
Inside here you have the ability to change the login screen images and such, but also it contains several compiled nib files abbreviated with 'LUI' which I am assuming stands for 'Locked User Interface'. I'm about to set up parallels and try to open them in Snow Leopard with xcode 3.2.6, and see if I can edit the nibs. If I'm able to accomplish this, would editing such files be in violation of their TOS?
Another possibility was running a window above it. On screen lock I can get the window above the screensaver simply by saying
[window setLevel:NSScreenSaverLevel]
but still, that doesn't overlay the login screen.
I feel like this shouldn't even be possible, but I seen something similar on the Knock to Unlock app.

Did you try to use the following line?
[window setLevel:CGShieldingWindowLevel()+1];
I'm using it to do the same as KnockToUnlock and it works like a charm. I see my window above the login screen either if I come on the login screen from the sleep mode or the screensaver.
Hope this helps.

Related

NSMenuBar apps influencing (disabling) each others views (NSMenuItem's) ? BUG

I'm working on a NSMenuBar application and another NSMenuBar app seems to influence the display behaviour of my application!? More precisely: Adobe's Creative Cloud Application. When I click on that (creative cloud) Icon, the popup-view appears. Afterwards, when I click on my StatusBar Icon, my Menu appears, BUT, all the NSMenuItem's that should be Enabled are suddenly Disabled, and not interactive anymore.
Some observations:
When I log the enabled-state of the NSMenuItem, it logs correctly as being Enabled, but it is clearly not displaying as enabled (see screenshot), and clicking on it simply closes the Menu without performing the associated action. I do the logging with the following code:
-(void)menuWillOpen:(NSMenu *)menu
{
dispatch_after(dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, 1 * NSEC_PER_SEC),
dispatch_get_main_queue(),
^{
NSLog(#"preferences menu-item is enabled: %hhd",[self.preferenceMenuItem isEnabled]);
});
}
The NSMenu I use is set to setAutoenablesItems:NO.
Also, Adobe's Creative Cloud uses a popup-view. And when it is opened, It clearly hovers over the screen-real-estate that my NSMenu is using.
When I try to reproduce this with other NSMenuBar applications (e.g. Apple's Wifi or Bluetooth) it all works. No problem. Then again, those applications don't use Popover-views, and they don't completely overlap the space of my app.
Please see these screenshots as illustration:
Before
Malicious Creative Cloud
After
What Am I missing here? Apps should not be influencing each other like this right? I'm slowly but surely losing my mind over this. Any help MUCH appreciated! Thnx!!
I have found the solution to my own problem. So I hope I will help anybody else struggling with this.
I was using my main xib file menu (with the status-bar) and referenced that menu to open when clicking on the statusbar icon. This caused the app to get in focus and to display two times the same menu (although not open at the same time), one under the statusbar-icon as intended, and one on the left side next to the apple symbol. Whenever the statusbar-menu was somehow getting deactivated, the left menu was still working, as if the focus was shifted to that one.
For me the solution was to decouple my referenced menu from the xib's menu, by dragging it outside the parent-menu. It's weird because somehow it's not visible anymore in InterfaceBuilder, but it's definitely still there. See screenshots:
BEFORE:
AFTER:

How to prevent displaying window on application startup osx

I am learning Objective-C and programming applications for OS X. I want to write myself a simple notifier, which should work this way:
connect to website and check, if there is new content (I have that covered)
display window with action buttons like "ignore", "visit website" (this is also easy)
I thought, that I will add my app to startup and if there are no changes on the website - just terminate it. But the window with action buttons will pop up before application checks, if there is a new content and window will flash quickly. How do I prevent that?
Is there a better way to create something like this? For example instead of running my application during startup - running a daemon, that will check the website every 24 hours and then display the window? How can I do that?
Recently, I read Start Developing Mac Apps Today, so I might be still missing something obvious.
Select NSWindow and just turn off Visible At Launch.
If you want to show the window, do it manually as follows.
- (void)applicationWillFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)notification {
/* Do whatever necessary before the window appears */
[window setIsVisible:YES];
}
Personally, I never have the Visible-At-Launch switch on.

Why does OSX/Cocoa dock icon revert to default before going away?

I'm working on wrapping some Cocoa functionality in an Objective-C library that will be called from a cross-platform C library. One of my goals is to provide someone who does development in C on Linux with the ability to deploy to OSX without having to get into XCode, nib files, etc. I want them to be able to compile and link their code on OSX using the command line tools, and end up with a regular resizeable main window with the usual buttons and so on, an application menu and a dock icon that looks and behaves as expected, etc.
I'm working on OSX 10.8.5. I have XCode 5.0 installed. Here's my gcc --version output:
Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 5.0 (clang-500.2.76) (based on LLVM 3.3svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin12.5.0
Thread model: posix
I've figured out how to present a main window, how to set up the application menu, and various other things, programmatically, without using XCode or any nib or plist, but I've run into a problem with the dock icon.
I set a custom dock icon image by calling:
[NSApp setApplicationIconImage:dockImage];
When the user quits the app, the dock icon image reverts to something else (some kind of default application icon or view), briefly, before going away. How can I prevent that from happening without using XCode to create a nib or a plist?
I've tried setting the activation policy of NSApp to prohibitted in the app delegate's applicationShouldTerminate method, to try to hide the dock icon before this switch back occurs. That didn't help, it does hide the window and the dock icon, but the dock icon still switches back to the default icon, briefly, as part of the process of hiding. I confirmed this by returning NSTerminateLator, and confirming that setting the activation policy to prohibited does cause the dock and the icon to hide even though the app is not terminating, and not setting it leaves it unhidden.
I've tried subclassing NSApplication and overriding the setApplicationIconImage call. I have confirmed that it is being called a second time, by something other than my code (well, or not directly by my code, anyway), just before the program exits. I've tried preventing the second call to it from working by calling the super function the first time, but not the second time, and I've confirmed that code in that function can prevent my code from changing the application icon, but that didn't fix the problem. It still happens anyway, somehow.
I've also tried removing the application badge, like this:
[[window dockTile] setShowsApplicationBadge: NO];
just in case it was something to do with that, but that didn't work. The docs say that app badges are no longer relevant as of 10.6, but I was grasping at straws.
Being stumped on the programmatic front, I'm now trying to find out how to package an .app from scratch,without using XCode, and see if maybe I can create a plist from scratch that has a reference to application image in it. But a programmatic solution would be preferable, as I'd really like to minimize what goes into the OSX-specific packaging of a deployment.
Another possibility might be to use XCode once, to produce a very generic, bare-bones .app that my deployment scripts copy and alter.
Please don't shoot my question down as being "too broad" or "not constructive" or something like that. I realize I'm reinventing wheels that already exist in various forms, but there's no law against trying to build a better mouse trap, or just a different or even a worse one, for that matter. I realize I'm trying to fix a problem that a lot of people would consider inconsequential, but XCode-produced apps don't have this problem, and I really don't want the tools I'm creating to produce any user-visible artifacts like that. I'm not intending to diss Apple's tool chain or invite debate about whether or not what I'm pursuing should be pursued. I have a specific, technical problem that I'm looking for solution to that is within the constraints of my goals.

Back button overriding in windows phone for webbrowser/view

I am implementing a simple webview application with only one url. I have over ridden back button function for webview navigation (which is working fine). Now my app has only one screen with webview and user visits the links inside main url and navigates using back button.
I want to know that, What is Microsoft Certification Policy as my application has only one screen so should it Close when user press back button anytime? Or Microsoft allows implementing of webview with over ridden back button functionality.
If question is still unclear Kindly tell me. I'll explain more but I need to know answer to this question.
Thanks.
You shoulld be fine, I have submitted applications which works like that myself which passed certification.
As long as the application quits when pressing the back button when there is no more "history" for the webbrowser control it shouldn't be a problem because the user still get the experience of moving "backward" in his use and can finally quit the app.
Regarding WebBrowser control and content of the app please consider this requirement:
"Your app and metadata must have distinct, substantial and legitimate content and purpose. Your app must provide functionality other than launching a webpage."
So, the application's sole functionality must not be only to launch a website.
This is not releated to back button but very important thing that need to be considered!
Best regard

Locking a screen in 10.6

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.