I have a window whose size I need to change when the user clicks on it. I am using [self setFrame:windowFrame display:YES animate:YES] to accomplish this.
Even though the window successfully changes size (I increase its height), it moves the contents of the window up with it. How do I prevent this from happening? I want the contents to remain in place.
I am on OSX Mountain Lion developing an app for OSX using Objective-C and Cocoa.
EDIT: Constraints and/or Springs and Struts will not work as I need to move the contents around after the window is resized.
Constraints and/or Springs and Struts will not work as I need to move the contents around after the window is resized.
In that case, you should use NSViewAnimation.
A single view animation can actually perform multiple animations to multiple views, and you can even do one to a window, despite the class's name and the fact that windows aren't views in Cocoa.
You create a view animation with initWithViewAnimations:, which takes an array of dictionaries. Each dictionary identifies the target (NSViewAnimationTargetKey) and what to do to it: Either change the target's frame (NSViewAnimationStartFrameKey and NSViewAnimationEndFrameKey) or fade the target in or out (NSViewAnimationEffectKey). For your case, you'll be changing the targets' frames.
When the user does the thing that causes the resize of the window, you'll need to compute the desired overall size of the window (taking care to adjust its frame's position so it doesn't grow off the screen), as well as the new frames—both positions and sizes—of your views. Everything that will move and/or change size, create a dictionary for it and throw it into the array. Then create the view animation.
An NSViewAnimation is a kind of NSAnimation, which provides all the methods for starting and stopping the animation, monitoring its progress, hooking into it, and chaining multiple NSAnimations together. If nothing else, you'll need to start the animation.
If you are using the Interface Builder to build these views, then I believe one approach is to set the "struts and springs." These are available under the "size inspector" and are the red arrows and bars above the "autosizing" label. Play around with these to get the effect that you want, but the general idea is that the arrows control how the size of the view adjusts to changes in the size of the parent view, and the bars control the relationship of the edges of the view to the edges of the parent view as the size changes.
In constraint-based layout, set the views around the edge of your window to be a fixed distance from their superview's edge.
Xcode will infer a lot of resizability from that; if anything still isn't resizing properly, adjust its constraints so that its width and/or height is no longer constant.
The easiest way is to move your views until blue lines show up in the editor. Each blue line corresponds to a rule in the HIG about how things should be lain out, and if you drop the view there, Xcode will create constraints matching those guidelines. For example, if you set a view 20 points from the right edge of its superview, you'll get a blue line for that, and if you drop the view there, you'll create a constraint that the view must remain that distance from that edge.
The superview isn't the only view with which you can create HIG-based constraints. You can also create guideline constraints between sibling views. For example, if you put a button next to another button at the appropriate distance, you'll get a blue line across that distance, and if you drop it, you'll create a constraint that those two buttons must remain that distance from each other.
If you want to do something really custom, the three buttons in the lower-right corner of the nib editor will let you create any constraint you want. What you have selected determines what constraints you can create; the nib editor's outline view will help you make sure you have the selection you want.
You are going to have to iterate through all of your subviews and change their frame positions based on the delta of your window frame.
so if you expand your window frame by 20 in all directions, all your subviews are going to have to increase their frame positions by (20,20) to offset the windows movement.
Related
In order to implement scroll view I do:
Create Cocoa Application
Go to XIB
Drag scroll view to the view window and set its constraints to 0
Everything seems fine until now
Under Bordered Scroll View (in the Document Outline) I press on Clip View and then View and resize that to any large number (under size inspector)
I add a button (for the sake of it) to the view (under clip view) (in the Document Outline) and sets its constraints
After this I immediately get the "Ambigious Layout. Position is ambigious for "View".
What am I doing wrong? Is this the proper way to add scrollview? It also seems rather difficult to add items to the scrollable area as I dont see the entire scrollable area in the xib.
Please help a noob.
In general this is a correct way to add a scroll view. (You can also create a view or set of sibling views, select them, and choose Editor > Embed In > Scroll View.)
If a view has no constraints, then Xcode will add sufficient constraints at build time. These constraints are not necessarily the ones that cause the view to behave like you want as things change size, but they're good enough to maintain the current layout of the canvas when things have their current sizes.
However, once you add constraints, Xcode will start insisting that the constraints are mutually-compatible (no conflicts) and sufficient to be unambiguous.
So, that explains why you get that warning. You have added some constraints, but not enough to make the layout unambiguous. You need to add enough. Xcode should explain in more detail what's needed, although there will necessarily be multiple possibilities for how to resolve the ambiguity.
In your case, I'm guessing that the size of the view in the scroll view is ambiguous. For example, you may have added constraints to position the button relative to the top and leading edge, and the button likely has intrinsic size, but you haven't constrained the view's bottom or trailing edges to the button. So, the size of the view could be anything.
Of course, rather than constraining the view's bottom and trailing edge to the button, you could just add explicit height and width constraints to it. Or whatever.
You may also need to constrain the view to the clip view.
You can also use Editor > Resolve Auto Layout Issues > Add Missing Constraints and see what Xcode adds. You can then change things from there if what Xcode added is not what you want.
For my Mac OS X app, I selected the controls on xib to embed in scroll view ( Editor > Embed In > Scroll View ) and applying the following constraints to Custom View (inside Scroll View -> Clip View) did work.
Where hight is to accommodate controls.
NSSplitView has a divider style called NSSplitViewDividerStyleThin which has become the norm on recent versions of OS X. It simply draws a 1-pixel wide solid line to represent the divider. However, the actual tracking area for the divider is about 3-5 pixels wide, allowing the user to click a little bit on either side of the divider to initiate a drag.
Since the split view's subview are laid out such that they really are only 1-pixel apart from each other, how is the split view tracking the cursor and mouse down events such that it's able to intercept any that occur slightly outside of the divider's "frame". Normally those events fall through to the underlying view (like a scroll bar flush against the divider).
First Thought:
That NSSplitView just had a 3-5 pixel wide, transparent subview for the divider that was placed over top of its two (or more) content views. But if I query the splitview for the number of subviews it has, it only returns 2. Likewise if I inspect using something like F-Script.
It's also been discussed in this Stack Overflow question that overlapping sibling views aren't really supported by AppKit:
Is there a proper way to handle overlapping NSView siblings?
Second Thought:
That maybe NSSplitView was just using an NSTrackingArea for the divider but if I ask the split view for its tracking areas, none are returned. And even if it was using a tracking area, can tracking areas on parent views override tracking areas on subviews? (I'd assume a subview's scrollbar, for example, would take precedence- but it doesn't in a split view.)
Third Thought:
That maybe NSSplitView was using some sort of transparent window that is overlaid on top, but unless I'm looking in the wrong place, I don't see any extra windows being created.
Fourth Thought:
That NSSplitView was using a local event monitor to track all mouse moved and mouse down events that are destined for the application and intercepting any that would be inside the split view's tracking area, even if the events technically over a subview.
So how is NSSplitView able to intercept mouse events that are outside of the visual 1-pixel wide space drawn for the thin border and instead occur over one of its subviews?
First, it appears that NSSplitView overrides -resetCursorRects and, within that method, adds cursor rects using -addCursorRect:cursor:. That's how it arranges for the cursor to change in the vicinity of its divider(s).
Second, it overrides -hitTest:. Mouse events are routed to views by -[NSWindow sendEvent:]. That uses -hitTest: to ask its views (e.g. contentView and the theme frame stuff) which descendant view was hit. When it finds which view was hit, it calls -mouseDown: (or similar, depending on the exact event) on that view. So, a view can prevent mouse events from being routed to its subviews. It can return itself from its override of -hitTest: even if the point is actually within one of its subviews and the mouse event will be delivered to it rather than the subview.
I understand the old Struts and Springs method of aligning, sizing and distributing views in Interface Builder. However, I cannot seem to figure out how to evenly distribute views using auto layout with Xcode 5. There was a way to do it using Xcode 4, but that option is gone.
I have 7 buttons arranged in a vertical stack. On a 3.5" layout, it looks great. When I preview the screen in the 4" layout, all of the buttons remain tightly packed and there is a large amount of space below the last button.
I want them to stay the same height, but I want the space between them to be able flex so they can spread out across the screen.
I've been able to get the height of the buttons to flex and fill the space, but that is not my desired behavior. I would like to learn how to use Auto Layout to replace my old Springs behavior, but I can't seem to find any way to do it through Interface Builder.
I'm ok with the top button either being a fixed space from the top edge or a proportional space from the top edge, likewise for the bottom button and the bottom edge. Those are less important to me, I'm good with either.
But I really need to figure out how to evenly distribute the extra space between each of the items in the view.
EDIT Note that in iOS 9 this technique will become unnecessary, because a UIStackView will perform distribution automatically. I'll add another answer explaining how that works.
How to Perform Even Distribution Using Autolayout
The simplest way to do this in Interface Builder alone (rather than constructing constraints in code) is to use "spacer" views:
Position the top and bottom buttons absolutely.
Place spacer views between all the buttons. Use constraints to position them horizontally (centering them horizontally is simplest) and to set their widths.
Make constraints between each button and the spacer view above and below it, with a Constant of 0.
Now select all the spacer views and set their heights to be equal.
The first screen shot shows me setting this up in IB:
I have deliberately not corrected for the "misplaced views" because I want you to see what it looks like while I'm designing the constraints. Here's the result on both a 4 inch and a 3.5 inch screen:
I have left the spacer views black, just to show you how this technique works, but of course in real life you would make them transparent and hence invisible! So the user sees just your buttons, evenly distributed on either height of screen.
The reason for the use of this technique is that although the notion of equality performs the distribution of values you are asking for, constraints can apply equality only between aspects of views; thus we need the extra views (the spacer views) so that we have things we can make equal to other things (here, the heights of the spacer views).
Other Approaches
Obviously, a more flexible approach is to assign the constraints in code. This may sound daunting, but there's a lot of third-party code out there to help you, such as this sort of thing.
For example, if we have a (possibly invisible) superview whose height acts as a boundary to dictate maximum vertical distribution of our four buttons, we can pin their tops to the vertical center of that superview with a constant of 0 but a multiplier of 0.000001, 0.666667, 1.33333, and 2.0 respectively (if we have four buttons); now the buttons will stay vertically distributed even as the superview changes size in response to screen height or whatever. [In Xcode 5.1, it will be possible to set that up in Interface Builder, but in earlier versions of Xcode it is not possible.]
In iOS 9 / Xcode 7 this problem will be trivially solved in IB. Simply select the buttons (or whatever it is you want to distribute vertically) and choose Editor > Embed In > Stack View. Then you simply configure the stack view:
Provide constraints that position and size the stack view itself. For example, pin the four edges of the stack view to the four edges of its superview.
Set the stack view's attributes. In this case we want Vertical axis, Fill alignment, Equal Spacing distribution.
That's all! However, you may be curious about how this works, because it is still possible to do the same thing manually in code. A stack view performs distribution, not by inserting spacer views, but by inserting spacer guides. A guide (a UILayoutGuide) is a lightweight object that behaves like a view for purposes of layout constraints, but is not a view and therefore doesn't have to be made invisible and doesn't carry any of the overhead of a view.
To illustrate, I'll do in code what the stack view is doing. Presume we have four views to distribute vertically. We assign them constraints for everything but their distribution:
They all have absolute height constraints
Their left is pinned to the superview's left, and their right is pinned to the superview's right
The top view's top is pinned to the superview's top, and the bottom view's bottom is pinned to the superview's bottom
Now, presume we have references to the four views as views, an array. Then:
let guides = [UILayoutGuide(), UILayoutGuide(), UILayoutGuide()]
for guide in guides {
self.view.addLayoutGuide(guide)
}
NSLayoutConstraint.activateConstraints([
// guide heights are equal
guides[1].heightAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[0].heightAnchor),
guides[2].heightAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[0].heightAnchor),
// guide widths are arbitrary, let's say 10
guides[0].widthAnchor.constraintEqualToConstant(10),
guides[1].widthAnchor.constraintEqualToConstant(10),
guides[2].widthAnchor.constraintEqualToConstant(10),
// guide left is arbitrary, let's say superview margin
guides[0].leftAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(self.view.leftAnchor),
guides[1].leftAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(self.view.leftAnchor),
guides[2].leftAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(self.view.leftAnchor),
// bottom of each view is top of following guide
views[0].bottomAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[0].topAnchor),
views[1].bottomAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[1].topAnchor),
views[2].bottomAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[2].topAnchor),
// top of each view is bottom of preceding guide
views[1].topAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[0].bottomAnchor),
views[2].topAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[1].bottomAnchor),
views[3].topAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[2].bottomAnchor)
])
(Obviously I could make that code cuter and shorter using loops, but I have deliberately unrolled the loops for clarity, so that you can see the pattern and the technique.)
Application requires more than one window (Lets call A,B,C). Each window has more than one view (table views, image views as well as web view). Lets say window A has three views (x, y,z) and window B has three views (d,e,f). Application needs to display images of different size on orientation change.
I have achieved the same using gesture event listener and looping through windows for views and replacing the view with new images. The problem I have is when we navigate from one window to other and the orientation changes, the loading of view after looping goes for a toss. Is there a better way to achieve the same ?
Is there a method in titanium like following code to replace a view ?
var self=Ti.UI.currentWindow
var newView=Ti.UI.createImageView({image:'abc.png'})
self.replace(self.children[1],newView )
Unfortunately there is now replace method.
You need to remove the whole view and add it again but this can cause a wrong layout if you have more than one view on a same level. The implementation then depends on the layout which was set (vertical, horizontal, composite etc).
For example in vertical layout removing an item and simply add a new one would remove your specified item but appends the new one at the end since you can't specify in which order it should be added.
If you have a composite layout you can specify absolute positions but adding a new view causes a higher zIndex for this view so that it will hide views that were previously added at the same/similar position.
Why not simply change the image link ?
var self = Ti.UI.currentWindow;
self.children[1].image = 'bcd.png';
Well you could always lock the orientation of your window. But this isnt exactly good practice (especially for iOS).
Generally orientation changes are handled pretty well if you define the width and height of your views to be percentages or Ti.UI.FILL, if you have a composite layout. Check that you are not giving the views absolute coordinates as this could cause layout problems. If you have a vertical or horizontal layout you usually don't have to worry about orientation change, unless you did not nest your views in a main container correctly.
Prasad,
If this is about just ensuring that the images look good on different orientations,you can make use of the different folders provided by Titanium in the android/images folder.You can just make different images for each of the orientations and device sizes.For IOS you can change just the images on orientation change as you are already doing.
https://wiki.appcelerator.org/display/guides/Using+density-specific+resources+on+Android
If you are concernced about the layout there are couple of things you can do:
1.Give all the height or width values in percentages.This way all elements will be re sized once the orientation changes automatically.
2.On each window open check if the orientation is vertical or horizontal by default and accordingly set the image attribute of the imageView.
Ti.UI.orientation
This property will give you the orientation of the window by default.Values of this property could be this
Ti.UI.PORTRAIT
Ti.UI.UPSIDE_PORTRAIT
Ti.UI.LANDSCAPE_LEFT
Ti.UI.LANDSCAPE_RIGHT
Use "if else" and accordingly set the images.
I've added an NSSegmentedControl to a pane on an horizontal split view on a normal window. I thought that adjusting the springs would make the segmented control centre itself automatically, but it doesn't. How can keep it centred?
I was told to add an observer for when the parent view's frame changes, and manually adjust the position of the centered view, but I've no idea how to go about that.
Any ideas are very welcome.
The layout you describe sounds totally plausible in IB.
Just testing it out, I dropped a segmented control in one of the views in a split view, and it stays centered, so I'm sure there's just a configuration issue.
Be sure that:
Your split view is set to stay centered and resize appropriately with the window as appropriate (just to make sure the behaviour you're seeing is not related to the segmented control's container not resizing properly).
You position your segmented control dead centre, and then leave all 3 horizontal "springs" unclicked (ie: no left anchoring, no right anchoring, no horizontal growing).
I don't know if it's been "fixed" in recent OS versions, but if I recall correctly, NSSegmentedControl does a -sizeToFit each time segments change. If the control isn't changing at all, Jarrett's instructions should work.