I am building an app, which will draw a representation of column-based data. I need both interactable cells and headers, so instead of adding suppplementary views for each column, I made another NSCollectionView that contains headers only.
The issue is that I would like to share selection rectangle state between these collection views, but I am not sure if there's some good way to achieve that or I have to hack whole controller.
Initially I was thinking about making an overlay on whole window, that would register in first responder chain, but it would use methods like draggedMouse only in my own methods and I would override built-in to pass the events to views behind, then if the view detected that user would like to draw a selection rectangle (select multiple items), that event would be moved to overlay view.
I thought also about making first row of items as sections (I am using compositional collection view layout, so it isn't that hard), but I think it would make features like drag and drop a huge pain in the bottom.
On the image you can see part of these collection views and how it looks now.
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I created a custom NSView that displays some data exactly the way I want it to (a line chart of sorts). I now want to add a couple of sliders to have the ability to zoom the displayed data in and out. I would also like to add a couple of checkboxes so that the incoming data can be interpreted and graphed in different ways, and maybe some scrollbars to be able to see past data. I need to have at least 5 copies of this view (with all its controls) on screen at the same time, each showing a different data feed.
This way of thinking a user interface falls nicely into the WebComponents paradigm where you can design a component that encapsulates many different ones. As I understand it, there is no way of nesting controls like this into a master control in Xcode.
Of course I could layout all the views and all the controls separately inside a view controller and achieve exactly what I want but it would not be as maintainable as having ONE object that I can duplicate either in interface builder or in code.
My question is: what is the proper way to achieve this in Xcode (if any)? I don't need code examples but rather a conceptual answer and I'm only interested in answers related to Cocoa rather than CocoaTouch.
I just learned that you can have multiple view controllers as child controllers. This is exactly what I was looking for as it maximizes reusability and reduces maintenance.
I have a very simple Collection View working exactly as expected. But, the underlying collection can get fairly long. The ItemViews themselves arent very wide. So, rather than have the Collection View run off the screen in a scrollable container, I would like to try and wrap the view from left to right maximizing the available screen width.
I have seen grid like views implemented with Composite Views, that are based on the table element. But I am wondering if there isnt just some magical way to make Collection View wrap left to right with css?
There is the CSS3 'columns' properties that may be what you're looking for: https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/c/columns/
I currently display several widgets (quite large ones, almost screen-wide) on a QStackedLayout, let's call these widgets "pages". Switching from a page to another is done with buttons below (previous, index, next).
I would like pages to slide while switching, as if they were placed on a larger-than-screen row, moving left or right depending on what the user wants.
For this I thought the QScrollArea would be OK, but I can add only one widget to it and I cannot index sub-items to move accordingly nor can I force a per-item-scroll (I don't want the sliding movement to stop between two pages.)
Another option is the QListView or other derivate from QAbstractItemView, but I can't find how to pass a widget as a QListItemModel or other reimplemented QAbstractItemModel. Roles for data are quite limited, and none seem to allow QWidgets.
How can I proceed to achieve this?
It seems using a QScrollArea and scroll programmatically using the inherited scrollContentsBy() would do the trick. The viewport then would be an elongated widget, sliding left or right so one section could be seen at a time.
Fairly new to Mac and XCode 3.2.6 and iPad. I have a fairly simple business data model to implement on the iPad, but can't seem to find the combination of views and controllers to use.
It's a simple data collection program, but there are too many data fields to fit on a single screen so I've resorted to the Split View approach.
I've got eight rows of table data on the left; RootViewController is the default UITableViewController. I'm trying to write the program such that when any of those table rows are selected, the view on the right (Detail View) gets redrawn and populated with a bunch of different controls (labels, buttons, text fields, etc.) that correspond to the selection on the left. Currently all the Details views are plain UIViewControllers.
For instance, the first "tab" might be titled "Personal", and I need to display fields to collect info such as Name, DOB, Height, Weight, etc. The next one might be "Address" where I need to collect Street, City, ZIP Code, etc. The next one might be "Employer", where I'd like to collect the employer's name, address, phone number, etc. These are mostly static and unchanging, but there are enough fields for about 8 screens worth.
I've got all this laid out in Interface Builder, but when I run it on the iPad simulator and click the very first button on the very first view, the connected delegate isn't called. I've put a breakpoint there and it's not being hit.
Is there some special magic to using simple UIViewControllers on the right side of a UISplitViewController, as far as letting them contain other simple Label, TextBox, and Button controls?
Also is there any special magic in that the framework built the original start-up code with a RootViewController.h/.m and DetailViewController.h/.m pair? Am I correct in thinking that a single detail view represents the entire iPad screen to the right of the Table View, and that to add more "pages" we need to write more files and .XIBs like DetailViewController?
Final question is how to implement the data model for this app. I noticed when the project was first auto-created, there weren't any source files for the model. (Maybe most of the predefined app types don't auto-generate anything for the model, but I understand that's a big part of model-view-controller paradigm.) Anyway these data fields on all the various views will eventually be part of a SQLite record that I'd like to save and load from storage. Where would I begin to wire all that stuff in to all the auto-generated "view centric" code?
If anyone has seen a "how to write real business apps for the iPad" website along the lines of anything like this, please post the link. I'm not trying to display jpegs of various fruits in a single (reused) view on the right side; I'm trying to display several real controls for real-world data collection for a real business app.
Thanks!
Basic things if you haven't already done them:
Have you connected the interface object the user is pressing from it's INSIDE TOUCH UP event to an IBOUTLET that then refreshes the right side?
If you have, and you've mucked about a bit (ie renaming and moving stuff around), try deleting it from the right-click event panel and then reconnecting it to the same IBOUTLET again (you don't have to delete any code).
Also, if you are counting on some event to fire that isn't firing, you should search on that (ie VIEWDIDLOAD NOT FIRING) because that can both occasionally be "broken" (ie no connection to the Files Owner) but more often one might misunderstand when that actually gets fired (ie VIEWDIDLOAD vs VIEWDIDAPPEAR vs VIEWWILLAPPEAR etc.)
For your data model, CoreData is your friend. It provides a modell-oriented approach and easily allows to persist data.
For your navigation needs, I think a tabBarController better suits your needs.
Changing the detail view from the master view can be troublesome, especially when using a NavigationController as detail view. The best way I've found is using the NSNotificationCenter.
When using UISplitview I strongly recommend to support the iPad only when it's a business requirement - there are some changes in iOs 8 that make easier to use.
I’m starting to develop my first full-blown Cocoa application containing a view which I would like to behave (and look) similar to Automator’s AMWorkflowView.
The basic features I’d like to achieve:
Positioning of subviews
Display of subviews in expanded / collapsed states
Multiple selection
Drag and drop
In order to get accustomed to Cocoa, I started with a custom NSView which mainly served as a container for the custom subviews and handled their positioning and multiple selection.
The subviews are also subclasses of NSView, and contain a variable amount of views themselves, like buttons, labels and popup menus, and therefore can have different heights.
This worked quite well, but before going on, I want to make sure to have everything neat and tidy according to the MVC pattern.
I suspect that there already is a class in Cocoa that facilitates the implementation of a view container, like maybe NSCollectionView.
It seems that there is no (easy) way to display differently sized views in an NSCollectionView, though. Should I continue implementing my custom NSView (probably using an NSArrayController for selection and sorting support), or are there better ways to go?
Any help is much appreciated
Unfortunately the answer is you'll have to roll your own. NSCollectionView does not allow for variable-sized items (which also rules out expanded/collapsed states).
For a limited number of items, you can accomplish this rather easily (you just need a container view that arranges the subviews properly when asked to layout, then you need to make sure you re-layout when things change). For many subviews, however, you'll need to take care to be as efficient as possible. This can start with laying out as little as possible (only those "after" the resized view, for example) and get as complex as caching a visual representation of a prototype view, drawing the cached images (fast!) for all but the view being edited, and only using/positioning a "real" view for the view being edited.
Drag and drop works the same as it always has, but none of the above accounts for the pretty animation NSCollectionView gives you. :-) It's fast and beautifully-animated precisely because all the subviews are uniform (so the layout calculations are fast and simple). Once you add irregular sizes, the problem becomes significantly more complicated.
The bottom line: If you need variably-sized views, NSCollectionView will not work and you'll need to roll your own or find someone else's shared code, but performance and beautiful animation will not be easy.