I have a NSSplitViewController and in one of the items I have multiple buttons with keyboard shortcuts.
Once the user hides the item, the shortcuts don't fire.
Is there any way to keep the buttons in the hidden view as part of the responder chain?
Sounds like the simple answer is no, according to Apple's docs. A simple workaround, however, might be to move the buttons out of the visible area by, say, shifting their bounds right by 10,000 or so. If they are in a scrollview/clipview that would expand to show the items in their new position, then this would not work so well, but if they aren't, it ought to work fine. If they are in a scrollview, then you might find a way to make them completely transparent, to achieve a similar effect.
That said, perhaps it is worth considering whether you have the right design in the first place, since having buttons that are not visible respond to key events is a questionable design from a user-interface perspective (as reflected by the fact that Apple tries to prevent it). Maybe those keyboard events should really be getting handled by a view higher in the view hierarchy, or by the window, or some such entity?
Related
I'm currently working on a prototype for a todo type app. I have a table which contains the user tasks. What I want to do is only present the user with pertinent task information. But to edit additional information, they would click on a disclosure button to expand the cell.
I was thinking of two possible ways to handle this:
Expanding NSTableViewCell
Using an NSStackView as the contents of each cell
If using the NSTableViewCell, I would probably have two NSViews to represent the cell (top part and lower part).
If using the NSStackView, I'd have an easy means of encapsulating the parts.
I suppose another method could also be just building it entirely with NSStackView.
The more difficult aspect of this seems to be related to the actual expansion/collapse of the cell.
I understand this could be deemed the type of question that's asking for an opinion. I've never built a MacOS app. So I'm looking for some guidance as to the best method to approach the problem versus spinning my wheels on approaches that are destined to not be productive.
Thanks!
In the end, it looks like the best thing to do is use an NSTableCellView with two NSViews for the top and bottom half. I had the case of this as well as the NSStackView working. But in the end, I found that using NSStackView to collapse or expand requires a call to make noteHeightOfRows work anyways.
So it would initially seem that it's not worth the effort of expanding it unless I have a more complicated cell where say I wanted a top, middle, and bottom, where the middle could expand and contract. While I would still need to use noteHeightOfRows, it would allow for it.
However, there is one benefit of using the NSStackView. The animation is much smoother for the collapse. I've found the NSTableCellView method with a top and bottom NSView shows signs of "tearing" as it collapses. This is what appears in the bottom edge, while horizontal, jitters. This is particularly apparent if you either spam the button or if the cell is selected because the bottom of the outline can sometimes grow in height.
I also found that when using NSAnimationContext to help make it look a little smoother, I'd see strange behavior. Like the hide would happen at the wrong time (even though it was in the completionHandler. I think the root cause of that are what becomes overlapping animations.
I have an NSToolbar with NSToolbarItem instances. One of the toolbar buttons is in one of two modes, depending on whether it currently operating (has been clicked) or not. I am handling this in code by changing the icon for the button to have a background rectangle when the command it represents is operational, but I can't help thinking there must be another way.
I've tried using the Selectable checkbox in XCode Interface Builder attribute inspector, and it sort of gives the result I want, except when it is selected I can't click any of the other toolbar items. I also can't see how to deselect it.
I'm a bit of a Cocoa noob so I expect the two state toggle thing is just waiting for me to find it, except so far I haven't been able to.
This seems like it would be a common thing to want to do, thing is how?
Although I know of a solution to this problem, I am interested if someone can explain this solution to me. I also wanted to get this out there because I could not find any mention of this problem online, and it took me several hours over several days to track down. I have an NSTableView behaving strangely regarding redraws and its selection. The problem looks like this:
Table contents fades in, instead of appearing instantly upon it's appearance on screen. When scrolling through the contents, the newly appearing rows also fade in. When you make a selection (single or multiple), and scroll it off screen, then make another selection (that should replace, not add-to first selection), the first selection does not get cleared properly. If you scroll back to it, it is still there, in addition to your new selection. This is a display-update problem, not selection problem - i.e. your new selection is valid, it is just displayed wrong.
I tracked this through the NSArrayController I was binding to, the underlying Array, sorting, all the connections, and settings, etc., but all that has nothing to do with it.
What solved the problem was:
In the View Effects (right-most) Inspector, uncheck "Core Animation Layer" for the Window's main view.
Can anyone explain what is happening here, and perhaps improve upon the solution ?
It looks like Core Animation and NSTableView aren't getting along so well. The "fading" effect is a by-product of the way core animation works. When you have core animation in one view, it is also enabled in all of that view's subviews.
I don't recommend using core animation on the Mac unless absolutely necessary, because some interface elements (NSTextView and NSTableView, for example) aren't compatible with it. iOS has much better support for table views and such using core animation, mainly because it was designed with core animation in mind.
I know that some more simple UI elements are compatible (NSTextField and NSButton, for example).
If you absolutely need core animation in the rest of the window, put all the other views in a subview of the content view, while leaving the table view directly in the content view. You can then enable Core Animation in the other view.
Commenters, feel free to add to the list of what is and isn't compatible.
I have an NSCell subclass that I do all kinds of custom drawing in. The only time things seem to be entirely out of my control is when right clicking a cell to show the associated context menu. While showing it's context menu, the table (or cell - not sure which exactly is doing this) draws a focus rect. I would like to get rid of this, or at least find a way to draw my own version of it that better fits within my interface.
I have tried about 15 different methods that seem like they could give me control over this focus rect drawing itself (various first responder methods, various drawing methods, various highlight color methods, etc.), but I have yet to find something that changes anything about it.
Screenshot of the problem: http://twitpic.com/3zx2t
I am almost annoyed enough to class-dump AppKit and try to find whatever private method it's using to draw this annoying focus rect. Nothing else I do has any effect on it. Any help here would really save both my sanity and lots of future hair pulling.
Thanks so much!
Without completely overriding your table view's -drawRect: this is the only other way I know to get rid of the context menu highlight rect.
- (void)_drawContextMenuHighlightForIndexes:(NSIndexSet *)rowIndexes clipRect:(NSRect)rect {
return;
}
This is the method, used in Leopard at least, to draw the highlight around cells that will be activated upon by a context menu. It is unfortunately called directly by NSTableView's -drawRect: method and as far as I know there is no other way to signal your disinterest in having those highlights drawn.
Of course this is private API, it may stop working in Snow Leopard, or some other release. But at worst that means that somewhere along the way the context menu highlight may start up again in your programs on newer releases or some other functionality using this method may not work later. You have been warned.
On 10.5 and later, NSTableView allows you to bring up a contextual menu on any item in the table (that is, without having the side effect of changing the selection.)
It draws that 'focus rect' to indicate which item(s) are being acted on by the contextual menu.
I think the title pretty much says it all... I'm looking to implement an interface similar to the standard OS X sidebar used in all the above mentioned programs, and I'm wondering if anybody has any thoughts as to the easiest way to do it, namely about what view to use for the left hand selection pane. Really I don't think I even need the hierarchical component as seen in the apple apps, I just need a good looking flat list of choices which determine what's shown in the right hand pane.
The obvious start is a vertical split layout view, but beyond that I'm not entirely sure where to go. A collection view with only one column or something like that?
I've done a few applications that use a similar setup.
I generally use an NSSplitView, with a single column NSTableView in the left pane. Don't forget to disable the headers, and make it display as a "Source View" style.
If you want the disclosure triangles, then you'll want to use NSOutlineView instead of NSTableView, but at least for the first go, I'd stick to a simple NSTableView.
A pattern I also use is to make the NSTableView slightly shorter than the NSSplitView, and have buttons at the bottom (add, delete, etc). I've usually built the program around Core Data, so it's easy to hook up these to methods to create/delete objects, and then bind the NSTableView to the array of objects.
Direct support for this sort of thing was added in Leopard. It's called a 'source list'.
Please see the AppKit release notes. Search for NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleSourceList in the document.
Or, drag out a table view and select Highlight: Source List in Interface Builder.