Is there any way to create this Type control in Cocoa MAC app.
You can use NSStackViews for this. Use one for each group of items.
Then place all stack views including your header views.
StackViews can easily show & hide single elements.
InfoBarStackView is a nice example app by Apple, which does exactly what you need.
Related
I'm looking for a way to embed another application into my own view.
The business reason is that the company has many small Electron apps (basically a small portable web program with a self-contained browser) that the company wants to embed inside an OS X program. These Electron apps would ideally integrate and display inside a subview seamlessly, so they look like little web frames inside our larger program.
I think programatically it would be easiest to open another program as a subview, but I'll take whatever I can get. Maybe even capturing it's NSWindow somehow. (Electron source is available so it is easily discoverable.) Maybe a way to dock the other program inside mine, or (getting more desperate) finding its view and sending commands to constrain it's size and location on top of mine.
So far all I've found says it is not really possible. I've found I can take the more desperate course. I can launch a process, find its view, and position it inside a spot on my display; when the window is moved or the content is scrolled send messages to move the other window. But that isn't really integrated, the menu stays separate, etc., but I cannot incorporate it.
Any ideas or helpful implementation details?
EDIT 1: Thanks for those responses. How about if we could have the electron apps expose their NSWindow somehow? Could that be leveraged? I'm thinking the application could send messages and (somehow, not sure exactly) to set the parent window inside this one. In Windows API it is much easier since you can call SetParent on anything, even items inside different processes. But Cocoa seems more difficult.
This isn't really a thing you can do in Mac OS X. Applications are not "composable" in the way you're hoping for - while it is possible to share a view with a subprocess under certain very specific circumstances (e.g, Safari or Chrome tab renderers), this requires the subapplication to be written in a very specific way to permit that. It's not something that would be feasible in the situation you're describing.
If you have access to the source of these Electron apps, consider combining them into a single overarching Electron application. Alternatively, if it's not possible for these applications to coexist within a single Electron app, you may want to consider using something like Chromium Embedded Framework to build your wrapper application; note, however, that this may require you to implement parts of the Electron framework yourself.
You cannot do that. Cocoa requires you to have only one NSApplication instance per UI app. So you will to fork/exec out new process and launch your applications.
If you can recompile the source code then you can create custom subclass of NSApplication and use that custom class in all the applications or you can create NSthread of other applications without NSApplication instance and go from there.
I plan to develop a mac OSX app that has a UI similar to that of iPhoto - a panel on the left and a grid view of images on the right. I am thinking of using NSSplitView to create two panels and using NSCollectionView for the grid.
I guess this must be a pretty popular and common UI pattern for mac apps. I am new to cocoa development. Can anyone with previous experience point me to any related cocoa code samples and design document?
Thanks a lot in advance.
N.B.
This missing piece here is an NSOutlineView in source list mode, put that in your left pane. But otherwise seems like a good place to start.
You might also be interested to see what the developer of Sonora approached this problem; although this is a music app the layout is almost the same.
I am Trying to Create a NSComboBox like the image attached with the list of Fonts. Any body knows and custom special control is available.
I have kept the image in dropbox
I see you're new to SO. You say "I'm trying to create", what have you tried? In general on SO you should show what you've attempted, what did not work, what piece of information eluded you, etc.
Here's some information to get you started:
NSComboBox justs takes "objects" and says it will display "common value classes" (ref). Have you tried NSAttributedString?
NSFontManager has a method availableFonts
You can use those to quickly produce a menu of styled font names, it probably won't be what you want but it will be a start.
Note that on a Mac the recommended ways to select fonts are standard Font menus and the Font Panel (NSFontPanel), do you really want to mimic a Windows UI for a Mac app?
HTH
Swift 5.0 🔸
let fonts = NSFontManager.sharedFontManager().availableFonts();
//Then add this array to an NSComboBox component, programtatically or via XCode-Interface-builder
As the title suggests...
Is it possible to add custom Data Detectors to Cocoa apps?
If so, a gentle nudge in the right direction would be great.
Note: To be clear. I want to add new detectors to currents apps. I am not writing a new app.
Thankyou
W
It's not even possible to build a custom data detector on anything but iOS 4. NSDataDetector is only available on iOS 4 and above.
If they existed on OS X and were a plug-in class like Spotlight importers, that'd be a nice feature. Perhaps filing a request at bugreport.apple.com would help it along?
Later update
I think the reason this hasn't been opened up with an API is because they're only meant to find common data (contact info, dates, URLs) for which there is only one (or just a few) uses. That is, contact info can be stored or used in "the" system-designated app. URLs can be auto-highlighted so they're linkable (clicks invoke the system-designated handler - Safari, an app registered to a protocol, etc.). But there's only one direction to funnel those actions and the endpoint is always a major "convenience app" meant to manage this common information (contacts, calendar, browser, email app, phone app...)
On the other hand, consider app-specific information. Data formatted a certain way for use with one app or platform might mean something else entirely to another application. In fact, this is rather common. So what happens when a string like %%SOMESTRING%% is detected? To one app, it might be a placeholder token. To another, it might be a user name. To another still, it might be interpreted as %%USERNAME followed by %%. Suddenly the simple system-wide UI for handling basic data types has to account for multiple actions and/or multiple "data detector plugins" claiming all or part of a format.
I'm not sure we'll ever see custom data detector APIs on iOS or Mac for this reason alone.
While custom data detectors aren't available at the OS level, there is a mechanism that will get you almost there. One possibility is to create a Workflow in Automator and save it in the Services menu.
It can be configured to be active when text is highlighted. You'd either go to the current app's main menu and select the Workflow under "Services", or else right click on the text and go to the "Services" menu from there. Not as easy as clicking on the text as you would a URL, but pretty close.
Create a workflow in Automator on Mac
Following up on this question: Kiosk Applications - OS X programming - Multiple monitors
I'm an iPhone programmer just starting out with OS X programming, and I'd like to know how I can present multiple views sequentially.
What I basically need to do is - Have a welcome screen with a button called "Click here to continue". Once the user clicks that button, it needs to completely replace the view with another view presenting a table view of options that the user can choose from.
I actually need to create a couple more screens, but any help on how to get this basic setup can help me get started. The problem I'm having is almost all the mac application source code available on Apple's website seems to be oriented towards single window applications popping up multiple windows for any additional tasks.
Thanks,
Teja
I enjoyed using M3NavigationView from Martin Pilkington http://www.mcubedsw.com/dev
Basically it pushes and pops NSViewControllers on a stack and allows you to animate between them. I am doing this for a quick setup wizard on an app I am working on.
Make a tabless tab view, and put each of your views into one of the tab view items. In Interface Builder, each tab view item will have a view automatically, so you just need to put all of the subviews for that tab into that view.
You can then switch tabs from code—e.g., in response to the “Next” button.