I am trying to make a custom transparent bordered window(without tittle bar) to capture a part of the screen.This window should be resizeable from the bottom right corner area,and could be moved by dragging any of the border lines.This window should be such that, it could also be moved over the apple menu.
I am very new to Cocoa, Can you please suggest me some guide or tutorial to understand creating custom windows and the event handling in custom window.
I have seen the example given in the link below and it was pretty helpful,but I am not able to understand the whole code.
http://cocoawithlove.com/2008/12/drawing-custom-window-on-mac-os-x.html
Please give me pointers to how to make such a window or what all to refer to have sufficient knowledge to be able to do it.
Thanks :)
The reason that you can't go over the Menu Bar is that NSWindow automatically constrains itself to prevent it from covering that area (along with the dock). In your NSWindow subclass, add this:
- (NSRect)constrainFrameRect:(NSRect)frameRect toScreen:(NSScreen *)screen
{
return frameRect;
}
This will override the constrainFrameRect that prevents you from covering the Menu Bar and Dock.
Related
What would be the best approach for creating a Window that is semi-transparent, has round corners and an outline around its border and the arrow, but without the the title bar and buttons.
The window will pop up from the Menu Bar when a use clicks on the menu bar icon.
I'm looking to have an effect similar to the "Applications" and "Downloads" windows:
I guess I will need to do the drawing myself. But I'm wondering what's the best way to do this and whether there is anything already built into Cocoa that can minimize the effort? Or maybe a 3rd party project that has already done that (couldn't find anything exactly like that)?
Thanks.
You can create your window with
- (id)initWithContentRect:(NSRect)contentRect styleMask:(NSUInteger)windowStyle backing:(NSBackingStoreType)bufferingType defer:(BOOL)deferCreation
with a style-mask of NSBorderlessWindowMask which will give an unadorned window. Its how the Dock does its mechanics too.
Note that you must init with this style , you can't change an already init'ed windows style.
Place a custom NSView via the contentView accessor with your desired background custom drawing at the top of the windows view stack.
You might need also to setOpaque to NO
What you are looking for has been done a lot. Too much really.
The classes you want to look into are as follows.
NSStatusItem
This is something that appears in the status bar section of the menu bar to the right side.
NSMenu
If you want this from a menu in the application menus, you'll need to do some clever things with views in menus.
NSWindow
As the other poster notes a borderless window is one way to achieve this.
NSPopover
This is another way. Combined with the above, a fancy technique is to use a clear window called a cover window then, when clicking on the menu or status menu, invoke a popover from a point below that in the clear cover window.
That should be enough to get you started with what you should look into.
Beyond that, peruse the Mac App Store and also look at cocoacontrols.com and GitHub.
In an iOS Tabbed Application I'm making, I've got tabs to load different viewControllers, which is pretty standard. What I'd like to do is make a few buttons (with images on them) load up another view with the button image maximized to the screen. However, I'm not really sure how to go about doing this. I don't want a new tab for this, I just want another view to show the full image, and then a button to return to the tabbed view. I've experimented a bit with making a subview to do this, and I've attempted to change the main viewport to the new view, with no success. If someone could point me in the right direction, and maybe give me a solid concept as a jumping-off point, I would really appreciate it.
And to clarify, I'm not looking for "the best way", per se. I'd be willing to accept a quick and dirty fix. But if you know of more than one way to handle this situation, I would appreciate whichever one you personally think is better.
I would do it by creating a UINavigationController to use as the primary tab view. When you want to show the full screen button, you create a new UIViewController subclass (below) and push it. That class will return YES for the method "hidesBottomBar" (its something like that).
This new view controller will be a traditional controller. You can create a UIImageView to fill the view (or you can probably replace the view with the imageView). In the viewDidLoad you'll set the UIImage of the view (or you can enter its name in the nib).
When someone clicks on the button, then you'll pop that view and return to your tabbed view (where the tab bar is showing).
I did something like this (not a big button), so I know the tab bar can be made to hide on the push. You can also hide the navigation bar so it never is even show (again, not 100% sure at the moment how to do it but its possible).
I'm searching now for a while but can't find an entrance…
The application should behave like a ruler app which is always in front of all apps and does not have a window. I want to draw things directly on the screen.
Would be great if someone could help me out with some keywords to search for or a concrete step into.
Thanks in advance.
Create a borderless transparent NSWindow and draw your content inside it. There are many examples for creating those around.
Use setLevel: to control how the window floats over other windows.
This is hard for me to explain, so please bear with me for a minute.
In Xcode, if it is in full screen mode, showing the app's menu also moves the toolbar down. I have tried to make an NSView move and resize whenever the menu bar is shown, but I cannot figure out how to do it. I think this has something to do with and event, because setting struts and springs in Xcode does not make it move automatically. Can anybody help me figure out what the event is?
Edit: I just re-thought my question, and I have to make a correction. NSToolbar does this on it's own. I want a normal NSView to move and resize itself when the window goes into full screen mode.
I think you might be having the same issue as I was - if so, you need to call [NSToolbar setFullScreenAccessoryView:] on the "accessory view" you want to glue to the bottom of the NSToolbar.
Note that in windowed mode, your accessory view should take up space in the NSWindow's contentView just like any other view, but when you enter fullscreen mode you'll want to remove the accessory view somehow since Cocoa rips it out of your layout and leaves a gap unless you account for that.
I can certainly understand this issue being difficult to explain without having the background knowledge - I had the same problem. :)
Also see: How can I get a two-row toolbar like in Mail.app and Xcode?
i'm looking for a way to have a NSWindow, which is able to block other NSWindows, like the menubar does. I mean: It is not possible to drag a Window over the menubar.
Is that kind of behavior realizable for my own NSWindow?
Thanks in advance
Bijan
NSWindow's dragging behavior automatically keeps windows from going under the menu bar — because they aren't supposed to. If you have some special case, you can override the standard dragging behavior. But think carefully before throwing away standard functionality prescribed by the HIG.
Also, it isn't possible to drag a window over the menu bar (rather than under) unless it's also over everything else, because the menu bar is normally above every other window.
I just stumbled on this question. There they say it is possible to move other windows using the Accessibility API or the Quartz Window Services.
Can't I just read out the other window's positions and move them, so that they do not collide with my window? Maybe triggered by a 0.1 sec. timer?