NSMenuItem with Image and text - objective-c

I have a question regarding NSMenuItems.
What I'm trying to do is replicate a java GUI using native OS X components, therefore the language I am using is Cocoa. What I am trying to do is to get every menu item to have an image and then, beside it, some text.
I have already done some research into it and my first port of call (as always it seems lol) was the apple docs which had this handy example which illustrates how to embed views inside menuitems:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/MenuItemView/Listings/MyWindowController_m.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS10004136-MyWindowController_m-DontLinkElementID_8
Being relatively new to cocoa, I was thinking I would have to override one of the drawing methods from NSMenuItem. Not really sure though.
Another idea that I was toying with was creating a custom view that held a image and some text.
Any other ideas/validation or discussion would be most appreciated.
Thanks all!
Oh and the GUI creation is being done by hand no interface builder.

Okay, so I now have menu items with icons beside them. For anyone who is interested here it is ( i've not done a leak analysis on it or anything).
First things first, put all of the images you want into the "Resources" folder (thats what its called in xcode 3.1.4).
Now, for example, after we have all the images, we want to use images called "eraser.png" and "eraser_on.png" and I want to attach these to the 3rd menu item. In order to achieve this we do the following :
The code below will get the menu item at position 3 in the menu
NSMenuItem *item = [ nameOfPopUpButton itemAtIndex:2];
The code below will set the image for the menu item to be "eraser.png"
[ item setImage: [ NSImage imageNamed:#"eraser"] ];
That's you set the image for the menu item (which will be on the left hand side of the text aka before the text).
If you want different images for the different states, eg when the user presses it, use this method (not tested myself but its sounds sensible :D and the function is straight out the api)
[item setOnStateImage: [ NSImage imageNamed:#"eraser_on" ] ]
You can however leave it nil or not set it at all and it will go the default color
Hope this helps someone.
Pieced this together from: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/MenuMadness/Listings/Controller_m.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40008870-Controller_m-DontLinkElementID_4
Thanks :)

If you need to do this you have the right idea in creating a view with image and label subviews.
BUT: don't do this. Creating a "native" application is not primarily about your choice of language (which is Objective-C, btw, not Cocoa; the latter is a collection of development frameworks implemented in Objective-C). It's about conforming to the platform.
On OS X (and iOS), more than probably any other platform, consistency in UI design is paramount. Users know when an application looks strange, and having icons next to each menu item (something I certainly have seen in Java apps) is definitely strange and unnatural on OS X. Users will be irritated at best, confused at worst.
So my advice is to either follow the Human Interface Guidelines (and save yourself a lot of work as a nice side effect) or just stick with your existing Java application.
If you want to provide quick iconic access to common functions, the recommended approach on OS X is to use a toolbar.

Related

How do you bind windows together in a Cocoa Application so they resize together?

I am attempting my first Cocoa Application after developing for iOS for the past few years. I have been "googling" around for awhile now but I guess I am not using the correct terminology to find what I am looking for.
In many applications OSX applications I see this little dot (or sometimes no dot at all like in XCode) which allows you to grab "an invisble" line? Which will resize two or three windows at a time while they are all bound together. How is this done? I'd like to implement it in my current app I am building. I have attached an image to clarify what I am talking about.
Thanks in advance
These are not windows. These are subviews of an NSSplitView
It's an NSSplitView. The line is the divider and can have 3 different styles:
NSSplitViewDividerStyleThick = 1,
NSSplitViewDividerStyleThin = 2,
NSSplitViewDividerStylePaneSplitter = 3,
(the style in the images of your question are the Pane Splitter style).
The content views can be easily added using Interface Builder, or programmatically using the [NSView addSubview:] method (NSSplitView derives from NSView).
You will want to control the splitter behaviour via its delegate (NSSplitViewDelegate).
Also note that the image in your question appears to show a split view within another split view, which is a fairly common way of laying out views.

Library style app in Cocoa

I am planning to develop my first app in Cocoa. I have been collecting ideas for the UI and have settled in with the design very similar to iPhoto (i.e. library style or 'shoebox' application as referred by Apple's programming guide). In a nutshell I need master detail kind of setup like in iOS (iPad's UISplitview).
To achieve this should I put a NSSplitview and on the left panel have a NSTableView and on the right panel have a NSCollectionView?
Are there any examples/boilerplate or tutorials for creating app in OS X?
Your instincts are correct. You might decide eventually you want something more customizable that an NSCollectionView, but it’ll get you started fast and you can do most of what iPhoto does with it. (You can’t do rows with varying #s of items on them, like Delicious Library does, unless you write your own view.)

General design for a Mac app, document based versus?

I am learning cocoa, and I am creating an application that will require similiar layout to the screenshot below (this seems like a very common layout approach).
What kind of controls/architecture would this type of Cocoa application be?
I'm still in my early stages of learning/reading, and I know of document based applications only so far, but this type of layout doesn't seem to look like a document based app since it doesn't really require multiple windows opened.
If it isn't document, is there a name for other design patters or layouts?
From what I now so far, I would describe this like:
I would be grateful if someone could give me a detailed overview of the high level design for an app like this i.e. things like: # of panels, views used, controls, controllers etc?
Also, a few quick sub-questions:
what kind of menu controls are those in the left pane, then expand and display sub elements?
When preferences windows are displayed, what is that effect called that makes it display in an animated way (like the address book does), where it is a small window that expands to its correct size in an animated fashion.
You are right that this is probably not a document based application, as they open documents in new windows by default.
To layout the window like that, there’d be an NSSplitView that contains the 3 panes. Each pane may optionally contain a view loaded from an NSViewController, which can help keep the code modularised, but it depends on what you’re trying to do if this is appropriate.
The left pane would be an NSOutlineView (a NSTableView subclass), the middle an NSTableView, but I’m not sure exactly how the right-hand side view would be created (lots of custom NSViews and other things, possibly WebView)
That popover options window is possibly a NSPopover (which contains an NSViewController), but that’s only compatible with OS X 10.7, so may also be totally custom for backwards compatibility and easier customisation.
Also note this is a fairly complicated example you’ve given, with lots of custom controls that are probably harder to create than they look:
To get the outline views on the left to have unread counts and icons (from memory) is not built into AppKit, so was all custom created. To do things like that, you’ll need a solid understanding of NSCell vs NSView, and ideally also know about Core Animation layer backed views, and what to use for different aspects.
The window has a taller-than usual title bar. This means the developer probably had to do some crazy stuff to get it to work, if not create the whole window from scratch.
That’s just the start. There’s lots of really nice design in there that’s custom and done from scratch.
Designing Mac apps can be hard sometimes. AppKit is pretty old (back from the NEXT days), and has lots of legacy stuck in it. UIKit on iOS on the other hand is quite nice – Apple clearly learned from their past and made things much better.
I’ve hardly touched on the controllers and model behind all that. There’s lots of different ways you could do it. For persistence, you could use CoreData, sqlite, NSKeyedArchived, just to name a few. Brent Simmons (past developer of another RSS reader, NetNewsWire) wrote some interesting blog posts about that:
http://inessential.com/2010/02/26/on_switching_away_from_core_data
http://inessential.com/2011/09/22/core_data_revisited
The way you design your model & controllers really depends on the specific problem. Cocoa really forces you to stick to MVC though – if you don’t, things are guaranteed to end up messy.
I hope that all helps! I’m really only just learning myself too.
Apple refers to this type of application design as Single-window, library- (or “shoebox”) style and gives a number of recommendations for this design choice in the docs.
(see Mac App Programming Guide)

Interface Builder + Sprite Strips

I'm in the midst of porting a win32 app to cocoa. Wherever possible, I'm using IB, since... well its way easier in every way possible, obviously. One thing is the designer and the win32 dev set up all the button assets on a massive "sprite sheet" such you move around the viewport to determine button state. Similar to how yahoo does CSS sprites on their home page (http://d.yimg.com/a/i/ww/met/pa_icons/20100309/spr_apps_us.png)
Can IB be setup to handle this type sprite strip with the default buttons, or are we SOL on this one? I can certainly fire something up programmatically that would do this, but would like to incorporate as much of the default button behavior and selector hookup in IB.
Thoughts?
Josh
This isn't supported in IB because it is really not a Cocoa way of setting button images. I understand why you would use sprites in CSS but in a native program (on any platform) it seems really unnecessary and inefficient.
I honestly think it would be much less work for you to forget about using the sprites. Out of curiosity, are these buttons going to be for standard user interactions, or something more along the line of buttons for a game? If it is for standard user interactions (open file, change font, etc.) then I strongly recommend using the stock buttons as much as possible, although I understand that this might be out of your control. The reason is that the worst ported apps are usually the ones that try to keep visual fidelity with their Windows counterpart.

Cocoa: How to morph a drag image while dragging

In Interface Builder.app (and some other cocoa apps), image dragging has a very nice/sexy effect of morphing the drag image while you drag a draggable item out of its window.
For example in Interface Buildler.app:
Show the Library Palette (⇧⌘L, or Tools Menu -> Library)
Drag an item out of the Library palette
NOTE: as you drag the item out of the Library Palette window, it morphs from an image of the original list item to an image of the icon of the dragged item.
I have fully implemented drag and drop in my Application using the normal Cocoa NSDragSource/NSDragDestination facilities.
However, I can't find a hook for doing this image morph while dragging. I'm returning the initial drag image by overriding
-[NSView dragImage:at:offset:event:pasteboard:source:slideBack:]
But this is only called at the beginning of the drag.
How do you signal that you would like to replace the current drag image (ideally using the sexy morph effect).
You guys beat me to it. :-)
Yes, JLNDragEffectManager is open source (with attribution in your apps, please) and available on my blog. It should work fine as-is with no modification back to 10.5, but I'm not sure back any further. Others linked to it (and it's easily googleable), so to avoid self-congratulatory blog linking, I'll leave it at that.
Issues: One developer commented on (and submitted code to fix) the lack of dragging offset support. I've just not gotten around to posting the update. That's the only outstanding issue I'm aware of.
Improvements: I'd like to add multiple "zones" (say, one per document, so dragging from doc to doc keeps table rows looking like table rows, but anywhere outside doc windows turns them into a file icon a la HFS Promise Drag). Some day ...
Design: The post itself details the reasoning behind the design and the relatively simple morphing effect (cross-fade plus size are animated using basic NSAnimation, etc.). The code (the class as well as the demo app) is thoroughly blocked out and commented.
Won't link to my own post but would love the karma of upvotes for my effort. ;-)
UPDATE: Similar (but better-integrated) functionality is available as of 10.7. If you are targeting 10.7 or higher, it's best to use the new API. JLNDragEffectManager works fine on 10.7, so it can be used for earlier-targeted versions.
JNLDragEffectManager does exactly that. :)
The API does not support this well. Joshua Nozzi gives a method that looks reasonable in this weblog post.
IB's effect isn't that fancy. It's a crossfade and scale. Hold down shift to see it more clearly.
As of 10.7+ the current approach is to use the
enumerateDraggingItemsWithOptions:
forView:
classes:
searchOptions:
usingBlock:
API on NSDraggingInfo. The documentation is really poor but the ADC samples like MultiPhotoFrame or TableViewPlayground can give a good idea on how to use the new mechanism.