I have recently switched to Xcode 11 and Swift 5. Also switched my entire project from UISwift to Storyboard as I read it has many advantages.
Now I’m finding disadvantages, I can’t draw boxes/lines on my storyboard, I can do it using the code but that creates further problems with making changes to my project in storyboard and element constrains.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to draw background boxes/lines between text? In some instances I have 6 labels that would all go under one box, so I can’t use label background feature.
See the online example below, of grey boxes
Now I’m finding disadvantages, I can’t draw boxes/lines on my storyboard
The storyboard editor isn't a drawing program -- it's mainly for laying out views and connecting them to each other and to other objects e.g. view controllers. If you're trying to use it to draw lines and boxes, you're barking up the wrong tree.
The storyboard editor does let you configure the views you create, so for example you can set the image displayed by a UIImageView, or the text displayed in a label, or the background color of any view. The gray boxes in your example are easy to do by just setting the background color of a view to gray. Or better, use a table to display those views, and programmatically set the background color of the cells depending on their row.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to draw background boxes/lines between text?
There are some hacky options. For example, you could very easily create a view class that draws a horizontal or vertical line through it's center point, or a view class that draws a line around its perimeter for a box. (You can actually use key-value coding to set properties on the view's layer to do this even without creating a subclass, but it's not something you want to have to do every time you need a box.) Those are fine for occasional use, but if you have any complex drawing to do, it's probably time to write a view class that draws the necessary content in code.
In some instances I have 6 labels that would all go under one box, so I can’t use label background feature.
Those 6 labels should all be contained inside another view, so you'd just set the background color for the view that contains them. Again, from your example, it looks like those are rows in a table. Each row in a table is its own view (or "cell"), and it's easy to set the background color in the same code that configures the rest of the subviews in that cell.
Related
In MacOS there is a simple App called Calculator, that I would like to recreate using Swift for learning purposes. A button like the plus button on the calculator has two images associated with it, one when the button is up and one when the button is down, as seen on the images below.
As you can see, when the + button is pressed down, its image changes to a darker orange color and the text gets a dark grey color. My question is: How to implement this button behavior?
Is it possible to do it with NSButton (and if so how)? or is it easier to implement it using CALayer? Or maybe there is some other way that I have not thought of?
You should be able to use a single image and configure it in code or in your asset catalogue to be a "template image". That means the shape is taken into consideration, much like a stamp, and the stamped-out area is filled with color dynamically. That means you don't have to provide a white and dark gray/black variant. One variant will suffice, usually black to see the lines well, and the rest can be configured through.
See the SO question "How to NOT highlight the NSButton's template image when clicked?" for details about the setup: How to NOT highlight the NSButton's template image when clicked?
I have implemented a calendar view (GitHub). When you click on a day cell, a NSTableViewRow is inserted below, containing details for the day.
Insertion and deletion is animated as NSTableViewAnimationSlideDown and NSTableViewAnimationSlideUp respectively. The standard AppKit components seem to simply vanish during the animation. That was weird enough for a few test labels, but Core Plot and it's CPTGraphHostingViews don't play along nicely:
The plot view (containing 1 bar plot) appears outside the visible range of the row view and jumps into place once the row finished its animation. See animated GIF below:
The row view contains a custom view with 2 labels and 1 plot view. The custom view is pinned to all 4 edges of to the row view via AutoLayout (in code). I added Auto Layout constraints to the plot and labels relative to the edges of the parent custom view. I had hoped this would resize the plot according to the animation, but it doesn't seem to resize but move instead (slide not shrink).
How can I stick the plot view to the row's bottom during animation and clip it while the row slides?
Ordering the plot behind the rest of the table seems to be my first problem here.
I have no clue why the plot, drawing above the rest or not, doesn't slide animated.
Turned out it was an issue with Core Plot being based on CALayers, which don't animate well in a solely view-based table. After fiddling with different ideas for a while, I got it working with setWantsLayer:YES, sent to the container view (not the NSTableView! That didn't work out well).
This can be done in Interface Builder easily:
I have been programming android apps for a bit, and I am now making an iphone app. I want to make margins for my view. I would not like to explain my exact situation, but if someone helps me with this I'll be able to figure out what I need to do.
I have two views, I want the first view to take up the entire screen. Then I want another view to always be, lets say 20 pixels from the edge of the screen on all four sides. Is there a simple way to do that in xcode?
Thanks
I assume you're using Interface Builder (now part of Xcode).
Add the view as you suggest - leaving a 20 pixel border around all 4 sides. Set all 6 resize options (flexible height, width, top, bottom, left & right).
Ensure that 'autoresize subviews' is enabled on the parent view.
The view will now resize if the parent view also resizes, leaving a 20px margin as required.
I have built so far an application that allows the user to drag and drop images onto a NSImageView. However, I want to be able to move these images by simply clicking on any image and hold down the mouse button to move it's location.
How can I manipulate NSImageView to translate/scale after setting the images down? Is that possible? I've read about the NSAffineTransform, but it seems like that is moving the images before creating the image itself. I already have the images on the canvas, and simply want to click and hold the image and move it with my mouse. Please help anyone!
There are two sides to this.
NSImage is the model object, which you might want to display in different ways, save to disk/archive, etc. If you want to actually change the model (scaling, rotating, etc.), implying a permanent change, then you are going to probably want to look at NSAffineTransform, Quartz drawing, etc.
But you probably didn't mean that. Instead you probably are interested in NSImageView, which is a view object, displaying the contents of the NSImage model object using whatever display attributes are desired. If you only want to change how an image is displayed, not what the actual bytes in the image are, then you are going to manipulate the NSImageView at run-time. You can use NSAffineTransform here as well, but it's somewhat uncommon (and usually unnecessary).
The key thing to note that is the NSImageView inherits from NSView, so you have all its power at your disposal. Take a look at certain methods, such as:
-setFrameSize: - useful for changing the view size, and thus the image display scale
-setFrameOrigin: - useful for changing the view position, and thus the apparent image position
Note again that these have nothing to do with images per se, and apply to all Cocoa views. You may want to take a look at a book like Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X to get you past the basics. (You can then do more interesting things, like rotation, animation, etc.)
I want to build a custom control that would work like this:
You have a kind of NSButton with an image.
You click the button and than appears a big square with a grid of photos.
You click one of the photos and it is set up as new image for the button. (square dissapears)
Now, how to draw this big square with photos if I want it not to be limited to window frame?
I mean, if the button was close to window border the square is going to be partially outside window. I would also like to add some shadow to the square and an animation for opening/closing.
One important thing: I want to be able to draw not only a square but any other simple shape (circle)!
This isn't really a drawing question so much as a general custom views question. It's important to make that distinction.
I'll describe this in terms of rectangles to give you the general idea*. You should make sure you understand the view hierarchy and view geometry in Cocoa. Without this important requisite knowledge, you'll remain dead in the water.
It's easy to set an NSButton's image, so I'll leave that to you. Your button's action, however, would tell some controller to show the "image picker" for the given button. Your image picker would be some type of borderless window with an image list inside. The image picker could be an IKImageBrowserView (you'll have to enable Image Kit in Interface Builder for this control to appear), which gives you an iPhoto-like grid of images (with/without titles, different border types, etc.).
An explanation of the operation of this controller and how it creates the window, manages the selection, and sets the button's image is very broad so if you get hung up on any of those steps, you'll need to create a separate question for each problem, otherwise this answer would have to be an instruction manual for writing your app for you.
* Your problem is a little more difficult because of your desire to have differently-shaped "popup windows" ... you'd have to make sure your available photos fit neatly within the shape so none of them are cut off. Armed with the basic knowledge of view geometry, I'll leave this to you as an exercise. A hint: you can use a borderless, transparent window to host a view that draws itself in any shape you please.