Is there any way that one can use the NSScrollView background texture that is used in Safari from within other applications? I know how to get the NSScrollView to display a pattern, I just need to know if there is a named image for the texture and what the name is? Or, if there isn't a named image, where I can find something similar?
This is a bit off-topic, I think, since it's not "how to use a background texture in NSScrollView" but "where can I find a similar graphic"? But you'd only know that if you knew it wasn't a system-supplied texture. :-)
This is a custom graphic and is not available via the system. You'll need to create your own, license someone else's or find one that is free for commercial use. Search the web for "linen background" or "linen texture" etc. If you have Photoshop, there are tutorials out there for creating your own Mac-like linen pattern.
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What I mean by this is, how much work would be involved in rewriting/extending default AppKit controls in a way that would allow for both a standard OS X appearance and custom appearance (loaded from image files) if the user so wishes? (Think of WinAmp or Windows Media Player.) Has anyone tried to bring this to the Mac?
I understand how to redraw an NSWindow or a button cell but that's all hard coded. I want something the user can add to themselves. What are my options?
Well, it would really involved redrawing all the custom components you'd need from scratch, whether in code, or using images. AppKit wasn't meant to be customized as it strictly follows Apple's Human Interface Guidelines; Apple wants to create one consistent UI metaphor across all native applications.
What that means in practice is that you're going to have to do a lot of custom drawing to theme your app. Using images makes things easier, but not by too much. If you want a custom button, you'll have to create a subclass of NSButton and NSButtonCell to load the images you want and draw (take a look at NSDrawThreePartImage() and NSDrawNinePartImage() for how to more easily draw resizable buttons). To theme NSWindow, you'll have to subclass NSThemeFrame, a semi-private class that draws the standard OS X window look.
Essentially, you'll just need to do a lot of subclassing to get the appearance you want. Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it recommended or easy to do? Not so much.
Of course, you have to ask if this is really necessary. The point of the HIG is to try to create one standard look across OS X. If not done expertly, a themed look can be tacky, and possibly even confusing for users who are used to the default OS X look. If you want to include UI theming, there usually needs to be a good reason for it (either to maintain cross-platform compatibility, but in that case, all HIG rules are out the window; or to achieve a specific look, a là game UI), but I really wouldn't recommend doing it, let alone letting users customize your UI themselves.
Yes this fully possible. But are you shure that you want to do this using AppKit? Maybe better use crossplatform solution like QT that support skinning through CSS?
In iOS, I'd like to have a series of items in "space" similar to the way Time Machine works. The "space" would be navigated by a scroll bar like feature on the side of the page. So if the person scrolls up, it would essentially zoom in in the space and objects that were further away will be closer to the reference point. If one zooms out, then those objects will fade into the back and whatever is behind the frame of refrence will come into view. Kind of like this.
I'm open to a variety of solutions. I imagine there's a relatively easy solution within openGL, I just don't know where to begin.
Check out Nick Lockwood's iCarousel on github. It's a very good component. The example code he provides uses a custom carousel style very much like what you describe. You should get there with just a few tweaks.
As you said, in OpenGL(ES) is relatively easy to accomplish what you ask, however it may not be equally easy to explain it to someone that is not confident with OpenGL :)
First of all, I may suggest you to take a look at The Red Book, the reference guide to OpenGL, or at the OpenGL Wiki.
To begin, you may do some practice using GLUT; it will help you taking confidence with OpenGL, providing some high-level API that will let you skip the boring side of setting up an OpenGL context, letting you go directly to the drawing part.
OpenGL ES is a subset of OpenGL, so essentially has the same structure. Once you understood how to use OpenGL shouldn't be so difficult to use OpenGL ES. Of course Apple documentation is a very important resource.
Now that you know a lot of stuff about OpenGL you should be able to easily understand how your program should be structured.
You may, for example, keep your view point fixed and translate the world (or viceversa). There is not (of course) a universal solution, especially because the only thing that matters is the final result.
Another solution (maybe equally good, it depends on your needs), may be to simply scale up and down images (representing the objects of your world) to simulate the movement through the object itself.
For example you may use an array to store all of your images and use a slider to set (increase/decrease) the dimension of your image. Once the image becomes too large for the display you may gradually decrease alpha, so that the image behind will slowly appear. Take a look at UIImageView reference, it contains all the API's you need for it.
This may lead you to the loss of 3-dimensionality, but it's probably a simpler/faster solution than learn OpenGL.
So I want to have a view (NSView, NSOpenGLView, something CG related?) which basically displays a map. Such as:
http://dump.tanaris4.com/map.png
Obviously that looks horrible, but I did it using an NSView, and it draws SO slow. Clearly not designed for this.
I just need to allow users to click on the individual (x,y) coordinates to make changes, and zoom into a certain area (to see it better).
Should I go the OpenGL route? And if so - any suggestions as to how to get started? (I was able to follow the guide to draw a triangle, so that's good).
I did find this post on zooming in an NSView: How to implement zoom/scale in a Cocoa AppKit-application
My concern is if I'm drawing over 6000 coordinates and the lines connecting them, this isn't efficient at all.
I don't think using OpenGL would be of any good here. The problem does not seem to be the actual painting, but rather the rendering strategy. You would need a scene graph of some kind to dynamically handle level of detail and culling.
Qt has all this packaged in a nice class class QGraphicsScene (see http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/qgraphicsscene.html for reference, and http://doc.qt.nokia.com/main-snapshot/demos-chip.html for an example).
Some basic concepts you should consider using:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scene_graph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadtree
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail
Try using core graphics for this, really there is so much that could be done. Watch the video Practical Drawing for iOS Developers from WWDC 2011 and it should give an over view of what can be done with CG.
I believe even CoreGraphics will suffice for what you want to achieve, and that should work under a UIView if you draw the rectangle of your view completely under the DrawRect method of your UIView (you must overload this method). Please see the UIView Class Reference. I have a mobile application that logs points on the UIMapKit, kind of like Nike+, and it certainly works well for massive amounts of points/line segments. There is no reason why this simple approach cannot work for you as well.
I've been trying to get this right for weeks now, and though I've learned a lot through my misfires, at this point, I just need a solution. The issue is with unpacking the seemingly overlapping graphics and UI APIs included in Cocoa, many of which produce similar effects, but feature unique limitations that I've often discovered only after investing many hours into an implementation.
I'm new to Cocoa, but not to programming, and I'm trying to create a Mac app with a very customized UI – think Capo, Garageband, or Billings. One view in my window will display an ordered list of subviews, each of which does a lot of custom drawing, and each must support a "selected" state and drag-reordering. The subviews do not need to support being dragged outside of their superview.
Ideally, a drag will give animated feedback as it happens, pushing neighboring sibling views to make space, e.g. toolbar icons or the Safari bookmarks bar. The trouble is, I can't seem to land on the right pack of technologies to get this right. I've done the subviews as NSView subclasses in an NSCollectionView and also as CALayers in a custom CollectionView-like NSView, and neither seems to offer the perfect solution. That said, the first option seems the better of the two for its superior handling of mouse events.
I've not yet tried doing this as a TableView, and I don't want to go down that path without some indication I'm on the right track. Extensive Googling has shown only that there aren't any up-to-date resources on CoreAnimation-enabled reordering or dragging. As such a standard feature of the OS X UI, I feel like this should be easier!
Any help from anyone on what the right tools are for this job would be greatly appreciated. TIA.
I'm searching for a library which implements something like Xcode 4's HUD which displays when a build is finished and such things.
Can someone give me a link or some hints how to implement it?
To clarify it, I'm searching for something like MBProgressHUD
Please don't suggest Growl, it's not appropriate for my utilisation.
To clarify it: I'm searching for a Mac OS X (Cocoa/Quartz) library, not for iOS.
I don't know of any libraries, but it would be fairly straightforward to do it yourself. Create a borderless, non-opaque, floating window and set your own custom NSView subclass as its content view.
You can then use Cocoa's excellent drawing classes to draw the thing. For example [NSBezierPath bezierPathWithRoundedRect] will make a rounded rectangle very easily, then you can fill it with a transparent grey and composite some text and an image with shadows and so on, in a few lines of code.
It's a bit of work, but maybe not as much as you might think.
ATMHud may fit your needs (source).