Does anyone know how to create custom buttons for Interface Builder? Like instead of have just a regular Round Rect Button, I want to have like a custom 3D button and some random image background for that button. How to do this?
You will either need to find a third-party class (ideally with an Interface Builder plug-in so you can see it live in the IB file) or subclass UIButton or NSButton/NSButtonCell for Mac and provide your own 3D rainbow unicorn drawing behavior. :-)
Interface Builder can only show you classes it knows about - you can't add behavior / modify existing drawing behavior there because that's the wrong tool for the job. You'll need to find someone else's or subclass your own in code then let IB know about it.
Update based on OP's comment
You can use -setImage:forState: to supply your custom image for the given states.
To do it in Interface Builder is prohibitively complicated (writing an Interface Builder plugin is a non-trivial task). However, you can subclass UIControl (which is just a UIView) and define your custom drawing in the subclass.
Then, in Interface Builder, change the class of the object you've subclassesed to your new class, and everything should work correctly.
Relevant reading:
How to override -drawrect in UIButton subclass?
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIControl_Class/Reference/Reference.html
http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/cocoa/284622-how-to-subclass-uibutton.html (If you really need to subclass UIButton instead)
It's probably easiest to use an image as the background for the button. For example you can use this tool to easily generate buttons with gradients, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/uibutton-builder/id408204223?mt=8
If you want anything more fancy it's probably time to start Photoshop ;-)
Related
I want re-draw these two controls, but I can not find the method to do that, anyone can give me idea to do that?
I have found some app has re-draw these controls, you can look the screenshot.
the first one is NSStepper, the second one is NSTabView,the NSTabViewItem is also be re-drawed.
You have to Subclass most of the GUI classes, if you need to customize.
For NSTabView, this is one of the class where you have to do a lot of thing yourself.
You have to draw yourself ( using beziers path )
Need to implement many methods of NSView & NSResponder for drawing and event handling.
Kindly check these links :
NSTabView with background color
http://www.positivespinmedia.com/dev/PSMTabBarControl.html
https://github.com/aaroncrespo/WILLTabView/
XCode 4.2 (the only version of XCode I've ever used) creates a ViewController with a default View property.
I cannot see the code for this default View so I cannot draw on it (because I cannot access drawRect). Is that correct?
Assuming answer to the above is that I cannot draw. If I want to draw on the window should I:
Add a subview to the default View and then draw (via drawRect) on the subview? or
Replace the default View with one that I create and can therefore draw on via drawRect?
This is not a question of how to do this, I want to know what would be the best way. Thanks.
If you need to do custom drawing in you view, then you should define your own custom UIView class, where you override drawRect to do the custom drawing.
Now, wether you follow either approach 1. or 2. depends on what your app does. Both are perfectly reasonable.
Say, for example, that you would like to do your custom drawing, but also show some kind of controls (e.g. to clear the drawing, to reset it, and so on), then I think it could be a better design if you have a root view that you add both the custom view and the other view to as subviews. But this is just an example and it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
Hope this helps a bit...
I want to draw a custom shadow on an NSWindow-Object.
Is there a way to do this by passing an own NSShadow-Object to NSWindow? Or a (private) method, where I can put my own drawing code?
Thanks,
Don't. You shouldn't alter the look of the window. Changing the look of UI is only allowed for Apple. Normal apps should use the standard one.
That said, there's a way, if you really insist on doing that. You can't just attach an NSShadow, unfortunately. Also, as far as I understand, there's no private method which draw the shadow. That's done by the Window Server, not by the app.
But you can ask the window server not to add the shadow. Have you noticed that in the Interface Builder, there's an option suppressing the shadow of a given window? That corresponds to the property hasShadow of an NSWindow.
After suppressing the shadow, you just need to draw everything by yourself. A nice sample code that does the custom window drawing is available at ADC, so have a look at it.
I'm working on an Interface Builder-type app for interface design. I would like to be able to align NSView's along their layout frames. Is there a way to access the ibLayoutInset property from my code?
Check out the Interface Builder Kit's NSView additions. Is that what you're looking for?
It seems like more and more OS X apps these days are doing all kinds of fancy drawing stuff for custom controls. Apps like Twitterific, Things, EventBox, Versions just to name a few....
So basically I'm looking for any information on how to get started doing this kind of thing. Not sure if it is just done by subclassing controls and using custom drawing or if it is something entirely different.
Any help is greatly appreciated. THanks!
It depends entirely on what you want to do.
The "Show Raw Properties" button in Versions for instance is an NSButton subclass, because basically what we needed is standard button behavior with our own look. One way to subclass a button is to simply implement your own -drawRect:(NSRect)rect method in the NSButton subclass, but we decided to stick with the way NSButton is implemented in Cocoa, meaning most drawing is done by the button's cell, so the implementation looks like this:
In the NSButton subclass:
+ (Class) cellClass
{
return [OurButtonCell class];
}
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)rect
{
// first get the cell to draw inside our bounds
// then draw a focus ring if that's appropriate
}
In the NSButtonCell subclass (OurButtonCell):
- (void)drawInteriorWithFrame: (NSRect) rect inView: (NSView *) controlView
{
// a bunch of drawing code
}
The Timeline view in Versions is actually a WebView, the page that you see in it uses javascript to collapse headers you click on.
The rule of thumb I use for where to start out with a custom control is:
To customize the look of a standard Cocoa control:
subclass the appropriate control (like e.g. NSButton and NSButtonCell)
stick as close as makes sense to the way the default control is implemented (e.g. in a buttoncell, start from the existing attributedTitle instance method to draw the button title, unless you always want to draw with the same attributes regardless of what's set up in IB or if you need to draw with different attributes based on state, such as with the trial expiration button in Versions' main window)
Creating an entirely new UI element:
subclass NSView and implement pretty much all mouse and key event handling (within the view, no need to redo "hitTest:") and drawing code yourself.
To present something that's complex, of arbitrary height, but isn't a table:
See if you can do it in HTML, CSS and JS and present it in a WebView. The web is great at laying out text, so if you can offload that responsibility to your WebView, that can be a huge savings in pain in the neck.
Recommended reading on learning how to draw stuff in your own custom view's drawing methods: Cocoa Drawing Guide
Customizing the look of for instance an NSTableView is an entirely other cup of tea, thanks to the complexity of a tableview, that can happen all over the place. You'll be implementing your own custom cells for some things you want to do in a table, but will have to change the way rows are highlighted in a subclass of the actual NSTableView object itself. See for instance the source code for iTableView on Matt Gemmell's site for a clear example of where to draw what.
Finally, I think Abizer's suggestion to go check out the code of BWToolkit is a great idea. It might be a bit overwhelming at first, but if you can read and understand that code you'll have no trouble implementing your own custom views and controls.
Have a look at some excellent example code: BWToolkit