According to Apple human interface guidelines, the recommended way of puting all controls acting on an item view (e.g. a tableview) is make an alignment of gradient buttons below the tableview. In my project, this should include a searchfield which, like other controls, should have a gradient background. I can see that for example in Xcode 4 in the left lower corner where one can filter the list of the project items.
But when I explore the methods of NSSearchField, I see no way of specifying a gradient background. So how can I do this ?
Thanks in advance for your replies.
Did you try something like:
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)dirtyRect {
NSGradient* g = [[[NSGradient alloc] initWithStartingColor:color1 endingColor:color2]];
[g drawInRect:[self bounds] angle:a];
...
[super drawRect:dirtyRect];
}
?
Related
With OSX 10.10 beta 3, Apple released their dark tint option. Unfortunately, it also means that pretty much all status bar icons (with the exception of Apple's and Path Finder's that I've seen), including mine, remain dark on a dark background. How can I provide an alternate image for when dark tint is applied?
I don't see an API change on NSStatusBar or NSStatusItem that shows me a change, I'm assuming it's a notification or something reactive to easily make the change as the user alters the tint.
Current code to draw the image is encased within an NSView:
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)dirtyRect
{
// set view background color
if (self.isActive) {
[[NSColor selectedMenuItemColor] setFill];
} else {
[[NSColor clearColor] setFill];
}
NSRectFill(dirtyRect);
// set image
NSImage *image = (self.isActive ? self.alternateImage : self.image);
_imageView.image = image;
}
TL;DR: You don't have to do anything special in Dark Theme. Give NSStatusItem (or NSStatusBarButton) a template image and it will style it correctly in any menubar context.
The reason why some apps' status items (such as PathFinder's) already work in Dark Theme is because they're not setting their own custom view on the StatusItem, but only setting a template image on the StatusItem.
Something like:
_statusItem = [[NSStatusBar systemStatusBar] statusItemWithLength:NSSquareStatusItemLength];
NSImage *image = [NSImage imageNamed:#"statusItemIcon"];
[image setTemplate:YES];
[_statusItem setImage:image];
This works exactly as you'd expect in Mavericks and earlier, as well as Yosemite and any future releases because it allows AppKit to do all of the styling of the image depending on the status item state.
Mavericks
In Mavericks (and earlier) there were only 2 unique styles of the items. Unpressed and Pressed. These two styles pretty much looked purely black and purely white, respectively. (Actually "purely black" isn't entirely correct -- there was a small effect that made them look slightly inset).
Because there were only two possible state, status bar apps could set their own view and easily get the same appearance by just drawing black or white depending on their highlighted state. (But again note that it wasn't purely black, so apps either had to build the effect in the image or be satisfied with a hardly-noticeable out of place icon).
Yosemite
In Yosemite there are at least 32 unique styling of items. Unpressed in Dark Theme is only one of those. There is no practical (or unpractical) way for an app to be able to do their own styling of items and have it look correct in all contexts.
Here are examples of six of those possible stylings:
Status items on an inactive menubar now have a specific styling, as opposed to a simple opacity change as in the past. Disabled appearance is one other possible variation; there are also other additional dimensions to this matrix of possibilities.
API
Arbitrary views set as NSStatusItem's view property have no way to capture all of these variations, hence it (and other related API) is deprecated in 10.10.
However, seed 3 introduces new API on NSStatusItem:
#property (readonly, strong) NSStatusBarButton *button NS_AVAILABLE_MAC(10_10);
This piece of API has a few purposes:
An app can now get the screen position (or show a popover from) a status item without setting its own custom view.
Removes the need for API like image, title, sendActionOn: on NSStatusItem.
Provides a class for new API: i.e. looksDisabled. This allows apps to get the standard disabled/off styling (like Bluetooth/Time Machine when off) without requiring a custom image.
If there's something that can't be done with the current (non- custom view) API, please file an enhancement request for it. StatusItems should provide behavior or appearances in a way that it standard across all status items.
More discussion is at https://devforums.apple.com/thread/234839, although I've summarized most everything here.
I end up did something like following to my custom drag and drop NSStatusItemView: (Using Swift)
var isDark = false
func isDarkMode() {
isDark = NSAppearance.currentAppearance().name.hasPrefix("NSAppearanceNameVibrantDark")
}
override func drawRect(dirtyRect: NSRect) {
super.drawRect(dirtyRect)
isDarkMode()
// Now use "isDark" to determine the drawing colour.
if isDark {
// ...
} else {
// ...
}
}
When the user changed the Theme in System Preferences, the NSView will be called by the system for re-drawing, you can change the icon colour accordingly.
If you wish to adjust other custom UI outside this view, you can either use KVO to observer the isDark key of the view or do it on your own.
I created a basic wrapper around NSStatusItem that you can use to provide support for 10.10 and earlier with custom views in the status bar. You can find it here: https://github.com/noahsmartin/YosemiteMenuBar The basic idea is to draw the custom view into a NSImage and use this image as a template image for the status bar item. This wrapper also forwards click events to the custom view so they can be handled the same way as pre 10.10. The project contains a basic example of how YosemiteMenuBar can be used with a custom view on the status bar.
Newest swift code set image template method is here:
// Insert code here to initialize your application
if let button = statusItem.button {
button.image = NSImage(named: "StatusIcon")
button.image?.isTemplate = true // Just add this line
button.action = #selector(togglePopover(_:))
}
Then it will change the image when dark mode.
When your application has drawn any GUI element you can get its appearance via [NSAppearance currentAppearance] which itself has a name property that holds something like
NSAppearanceNameVibrantDark->NSAppearanceNameAqua->NSAppearanceNameAquaMavericks
The first part is the appearance’s name, which is also available as a constant in NSAppearanceNameVibrantDark or NSAppearanceNameVibrantLight.
I don’t know if there’s a way to get just the first part, but I think this does the trick for now.
Example code:
-(void)awakeFromNib {
NSStatusItem* myStatusItem = [[NSStatusBar systemStatusBar] statusItemWithLength:NSVariableStatusItemLength];
myStatusItem.title = #"Hello World";
if ([[[NSAppearance currentAppearance] name] containsString:NSAppearanceNameVibrantDark]) {
myStatusItem.title = #"Dark Interface";
} else {
myStatusItem.title = #"Light Interface";
}
}
But just in case you do want to monitor the status changes you can. I also know there is a better way to determine lite/dark mode than what's been said above, but I can remember it right now.
// Monitor menu/dock theme changes...
[[NSDistributedNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver: self selector: #selector(themeChange:) name:#"AppleInterfaceThemeChangedNotification" object: NULL];
//
-(void) themeChange :(NSNotification *) notification
{
NSLog (#"%#", notification);
}
I have a problem that I think is solvable with some hackery, but I'm very curious if there is an easier way to get the job done without having to do all of that.
I have a stack of NSViews (layer-backed, if that somehow helps provides some better solution), as shown below:
The thing here is that this is essentially a menu, but is hover-sensitive. If the user hovers over one of the exposed parts of the lower-level views, I need to perform an action depending on what that view is. It is a dynamic system so the number of stacked menu items like this may change, making static calculations more difficult. As you can see, they are basically all a copy (shape-wise) of the first item, but then rotated a bit the further you go down the stack via simple transform rotation.
My question to the SO community is what do you all think the best approach to getting mouseEntered: and mouseExited: events for just the literally visible portions of these views?
What I have attempted to do is use an NSTrackingArea on the visibleRect portion of these views, which sounds much more handy than it really is in this situation. In reality, the visibleRect seems to be "visible" for all of them, all the time. Nothing is explicitly blocked or hidden by anything more than just a partially overlapping NSView. All that happens is I get a spammed console from all of the views screaming out at once that a mouse entered their rect.
Something I am considering is making sub-NSView's of each menu item and having each of those be responsible for the tracking area... each menu item having a "strip" view along the right and bottom sides that could report, but that's still a bit of a hack and is icky.
Does anyone have a better idea? Perhaps one from experience?
Thanks!
I know you already have a solution, but I thought I would try a different approach, that didn't require getting tons of mouseMoved events. I created 3 custom views in code, added tracking rects for them and sent all mouseEntered and mouseExited messages to the same method that does a hitTest to determine which view is top most. This is the code for the content view of the window.
#implementation MainView
#synthesize oldView;
-(void)awakeFromNib {
oldView = nil;
Card *card1 = [[Card alloc]initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(150, 150, 200, 150) color:[NSColor redColor] name:#"Red Box"];
NSTrackingArea *area1 = [[NSTrackingArea alloc]initWithRect:card1.frame options:NSTrackingMouseEnteredAndExited|NSTrackingActiveInActiveApp owner:self userInfo:nil];
[self addTrackingArea:area1];
[self addSubview:card1];
Card *card2 = [[Card alloc]initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(180, 120, 200, 150) color:[NSColor yellowColor] name:#"Yellow Box"];
NSTrackingArea *area2 = [[NSTrackingArea alloc]initWithRect:card2.frame options:NSTrackingMouseEnteredAndExited|NSTrackingActiveInActiveApp owner:self userInfo:nil];
[self addTrackingArea:area2];
[self addSubview:card2];
Card *card3 = [[Card alloc]initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(210, 90, 200, 150) color:[NSColor greenColor] name:#"Green Box"];
NSTrackingArea *area3 = [[NSTrackingArea alloc]initWithRect:card3.frame options:NSTrackingMouseEnteredAndExited|NSTrackingActiveInActiveApp owner:self userInfo:nil];
[self addTrackingArea:area3];
[self addSubview:card3];
}
-(void)mouseEntered:(NSEvent *)theEvent {
[self reportTopView:theEvent];
}
-(void)mouseExited:(NSEvent *)theEvent {
[self reportTopView:theEvent];
}
-(void)reportTopView:(NSEvent *)theEvent {
id topView = [self hitTest:[theEvent locationInWindow]];
if (![topView isEqual:oldView]) {
oldView = topView;
([topView isKindOfClass:[Card class]])? NSLog(#"%#",[(Card *)topView name]):NULL;
}
}
This is the code for what I called cards (colored rectangles):
#implementation Card
#synthesize name,fillColor;
- (id)initWithFrame:(NSRect)frame color:(NSColor *)color name:(NSString *)aName{
self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
if (self) {
self.fillColor = color;
self.name = aName;
}
return self;
}
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)rect {
[self.fillColor drawSwatchInRect:rect];
}
I finally came to a solution on Twitter via Steven Troughton-Smith. Here's how it works:
In each menu item, I am disregarding anything related to NSTrackingArea or direct mouse position interpretation. Instead, the parent controller view is handling all of the tracking and receiving mouse movement events.
Each menu item has an overridden hitTest: method that does the point conversion and returns whether or not the point being tested is within the background image (there are shadows and stuff in there, making it more difficult than the vanilla implementation).
I then setup a sort of "hover menu item changed" callback in the controller so that I can handle hover menu changes.
This was a pretty straightforward solution. Very glad I decided to stop and ask, rather than hack something together with my previous idea.
Thanks Steven!
Overlapping tracking-areas:
All you have to do is hitTest from view you are in. if this is true:
window.view.hitTest(window.mousePos) === self/*sudo code*/
What this code does is that it returns the view under the mouse position. Now all you have to do is setup a few "if" and "else" clauses to verify that your mouse is off or on the view.
Full code example:
https://gist.github.com/eonist/537ae53b86d5fc332fd3
Full description of the concept here: (perma link)
http://stylekit.org/blog/2015/12/20/Overlapping-tracking-areas/
VS the default enter and exit behaviour:
I had to add another answer to this question as this is another approach to solve the problem. This approach now also includes path assertion (think rects with round edges or other custom paths)
The answer is long winded but it works:
http://stylekit.org/blog/2016/01/28/Hit-testing-sub-views/
it involves using the apple provided method: CGPathContainsPoint(path,transform,point)
If you follow the link to that blog post and then from there check the styleKit repo on github. You will find the code need to achieve the gif animation example given above. Im providing this as a pointer to the answer as it may take you significantly less time than trying to research this on your own. I use this technique in all my UI elements and it works flawlessly.
I want to change the picker view bakground color. I try this way but not worked.
doublePicker.backgroundColor = [self RGBColorR:85 G:17 B:92];
- (UIColor *)RGBColorR:(double)red G:(double)green B:(double)blue {
return [UIColor colorWithRed:(red/255.00) green:(green/255.00) blue:(blue/255.00) alpha:1.00];
}
I want to do picker view like in picture. How can I do this? Thanks for your reply.
you can add subviews over certain areas of your pickerview..
use:
[picker addSubview: coverView]; //adding subviews to different area of the picker
you're going to find yourself playing with alot of CGRect to get thing to fit properly. If you want to change the entire thing you're going to have to override some methods that handle the touch events etc..
this tutorial might help you create a custom picker
https://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/samplecode/UICatalog/
You cannot change the appearance of UIPickerView, even the size, it's the most unchangeable UI element in iOS. Best you can do is build custom by yourself, using UIScrollView with paging enabled.
I have the need to draw a background image or set a tint color on a navigation bar, but I also need the option to have the navigation bar appear as it normally would. I'm currently using a category to support If my app does not specify a background image, what can I do instead to ensure the drawRect method does it normally would do?
I.E. -
#implementation UINavigationBar (UINavigationBarCategory)
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
if(hasImage){
UIImage *img = [[UIImage alloc] initWithData:[NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://myimageurl.com/img.jpg"]]];
[img drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height)];
}else{
??????
}
}
#end
I actually ended up doing something entirely different and I'm wondering why nobody hasn't discovered this before. One of the approaches I've seen in the course of my Googling on the subject was simply adding an image as a subview to the UINavigationBar. The only problem was this made the buttons in the bar not clickable. The fix was to disable user interaction on the image.
myUIImageView.userInteractionEnabled = NO;
[myNavController.navigationBar addSubview:myUIImageView];
[myNavController.navigationBar sendSubviewToBack:myUIImageView];
With that, everything looks/works great and I don't have to override the drawRect method with a category, swizzle methods or any of that funky stuff. Simple and clean.
Theoretically you could do this by subclassing UINavigationBar overriding only the drawRect: method, and then calling [super drawRect:rect] when you want to use the default behavior.
But I don't believe you can in practice because you don't instantiate the UINavigationBar directly.
Solving this is possible but nontrivial, since the category method "replaces" the original method rather than subclassing it from the runtime's standpoint. This is why just using, say, super, won't work.
You should check out this post on "supersequent" implementation: http://cocoawithlove.com/2008/03/supersequent-implementation.html
(That link and some other related ideas are in the answer to this question: Using Super in an Objective C Category? )
I am looking for a perfect solution to set a background image for a window in a cocoa application. I haven't found a solution to this, I am new in objective c, so please anyone help me...
A window in Cocoa has a root-level view called the "content view". This is the view that contains all the others in a window. By default, it's just a plain, blank NSView. But you could easily create your own custom NSView subclass, override the drawRect: method to draw your background image, and use that for your custom view.
However, it might just be easier to use a plain old NSImageView. The advantage of this is that you can set, for example, autosizing behavior to keep the image pinned to one corner (try this with Installer.app by resizing the installer window). You would also be able to make it semi-opaque so that the background shows through a bit. (Again, I'm thinking of Installer.app; your app could be totally different)
Hope that gets you going in the right direction!
Michael Vannorsdel suggests sublassing NSView for the purpose, and I quote:
You'd really be better off making an
NSView subclass and having it draw
the image you want in drawRect:.
- (void)awakeFromNib
{
myImage = [[NSImage alloc] init....
[self setNeedsDisplay:YES];
}
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)rect
{
NSSize isize = [myImage size];
[myImage drawInRect:[self bounds] fromRect:NSMakeRect(0.0, 0.0,
isize.width, isize.height) operation: NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
}
Read that whole thread on cocoabuilder, it's quite instructive.