I am using a 3 segment NSSegmentedControl for adding and removing configurations, as well as the cog "action" symbol to pop up a menu.
However, when the menu pops up it shows up as follows:
I would much prefer the popup to be displayed centered above the cog segment instead below and sticking off the bottom of my window (which is actually a preference pane).
I have created a subclass of NSSegmentedCell to override the 'action' method as described in this answer.
I would prefer to avoid private APIs if at all possible!
Related
I'm currently working on a project that utilizes an MDI Form. What I would like to achieve is that when the user hovers over one of the menu options in the MDI menu, a ToolTipText appears describing what can be found in said menu. I'm aware of the fact that in some options for VisualBasic 6, ToolTip is supported. However, I can't seem to add this to the MDI Form, or add a label control for that matter. Has anyone ever run into this problem, and if so, is there a workaround or a solution?
Please let me know if you have any additional questions or comments. Thank you in advance.
I'm not aware that any true menus on a VB6 for (even non-MDI) have a tool-tip property; hence, neither does the MDIForm when one its child forms has its menu displayed.
However, there are a few controls that can be put on the MDI parent form. The most useful of these is probably the PictureBox, into which you can then place any type of control, such as CommandButtons. It must be "docked" to either the top or bottom of the MDIForm, using the PictureBox.Align property. Controls within the PictureBox can be located any way you wish, and can have their normal ToolTip properties set.
Another MIDForm-usable control that I've had good luck with is the ToolBar control, which comes in as part of the CommonControls component. Like the PictureBox, it has a .Align property to set it to the top or bottom of the MDIForm. You can put any reasonable number of "buttons" on it, and have reasonable control over their appearance (graphics, etc.); apropos the OP's query, you can assign a ToolTip to each button. It wouldn't be difficult to have the buttons change depending upon the currently-active form, just as the MDI menus normally do.
One other alternative that can be considered (but may be quite tedious to implement) could be reading the Mouse.X and Mouse.Y properties for each MDI menu and setting the captions of a Label control (or TextBox) using the Mouse Hover event.
You'd need to find the top left and bottom right points for each MDI menu and if it is within the box, you can show your label control with the intended caption. But note that you can't just put any controls on an MDI Form except maybe PictureBoxes, Toolbars and Coolbars, etc.
So the Label or TextBox control would have to be first placed on top of a PictureBox control which can be top aligned.
I'd like a toolbar button with an attached dropdown menu, like the "Flag" button in the toolbar in Mail.app:
I'd hoped that making a normal NSMenuItem and adding a menu as the menuFormRepresentation would do the trick, but that menu only appears when the button goes into overflow mode.
I had also hoped that adding an NSPopupButton as a custom view would work, but that makes the whole view a menu, whereas I want the left part of the component to behave like a normal button, and the right dropdown part bring up the menu.
Is there some trick to making the NSToolbarItem show a component like this, or is this two custom views stuck together?
There's nothing magical about NSToolbar here. That's just one of the ways you can set up NSSegmentedControl, regardless of whether it appears as a toolbar item's custom view or on its own.
You can't set this up in Interface Builder (storyboard), but NSSegmentedControl has APIs for assigning menus to segments:
segmentControl.setMenu(myMenu, forSegment: 1)
segmentControl.setShowsMenuIndicator(true, forSegment: 1) // for the little arrow
You probably want to set the tracking mode to momentary, since your segment control is acting as a set of visually-connected buttons, not a choose-one-of-N selector.
When the user clicks either segment, your action method will need to use the selectedSegment to decide whether to perform the action associated with the "button" side or ignore the click (letting the menu show for the other side).
Desired look
I wish to make a toolbar for my app that will contain some simple buttons, each with a single monochromatic icon. Here is an example of some toolbar buttons similar to I'm trying to achieve, from Mail's compose window:
Notice these buttons have a consistent size, inner padding, padding, and shading. This is a pretty consistent style across macOS, present in Mail, Safari, Finder, etc. This leads me to suspect there's a standardized UI component for creating such buttons.
If I use a segmented control, each button looks correct, with each icon being correctly padded:
Now I would like to add individual buttons that match the style.
Attempt 1
My first attempt was to add a "Push Button" (NSButton) to the toolbar:
This resulted in a wide button that's a bit too short, and not lined up with the segmented control:
Attempt 2
My second attempt was to use a segmented control, with only 1 segment.
This resulted in a button that's the right shape, size, etc., but it was off center relative to its label.
Naturally, I can manually adjust the button to match the goal, but I feel like I'm missing something. What's the proper way to create these standard buttons?
This is actually quite easy to do and you were close already.
You can use NSButton for that. Note that it has different styles (defined in NSButton.BezelStyle) to choose from. The default one is the one to use inside windows and modals. But for toolbars, to match the style of segmented controls and search bars, you can choose the style .texturedRounded.
You can also set the style via Interface Builder. Note that you have to select the button itself, not the toolbar item around it.
To get the correct size, you seem to set the icon within the toolbar item, not the button itself.
Here is my result:
I want to have a window with a hidden title, as seen in Safari or Xcode, but using a titlebar accessory view instead of a toolbar (I want more control over arrangement and content than a toolbar provides). Is this doable?
I haven't quite been able to make it work. If I set my window's titleVisibility to hidden, and my accessory view's layoutAttribute is bottom, then the title area is empty except for the standard close/minimize/zoom buttons, and my accessory view appears below that.
If I change the layoutAttribute to right, then my accessory view appears to the right of the standard buttons where I want it, but the bottom is cut off because the title bar isn't tall enough, and the view also doesn't resize horizontally with the window.
Is there a way to make this work? Or do I have to use a toolbar?
Update: I used Xcode's visual debugger to examine Xcode's own title bar, and found that it is using a toolbar. The debugger refuses to attach to Safari, so I'm left wondering how it does the new tab button. I imagine that button is a right-pinned accessory view, and the rest is a normal toolbar. Safari's toolbar is still customizable, so that seems most likely.
I decided to go ahead and use a toolbar, and it's working pretty well.
I took my NSTitleBarAccessoryController subclass and made it inherit from NSViewController instead.
I created a non-customizable toolbar for my window, with a single "Image Toolbar Item" in both the allowed and default sets.
The toolbar item has a height of 32 and a max width of 10000 so it can stretch to fill the title bar.
In my toolbar delegate, in toolbarWillAddItem:, I instantiate the view controller from the nib and put its view into the item.
A text label that is effectively the new window title has its value bound to the window's title.
To match the spacing in Xcode's title bar, use a left and right margin of 1 pixel (zero will cut off the edges) and a top margin of 5.
window.titleVisibility = .hidden moves the toolbar into the title area.
I'm trying to make my first Cocoa app (previously I was making iOS apps) and what I wish to do for my custom view is make it's title clickable with indicator (accessory) triangle facing down.
Clicking the title would open a popup/menu with my items.
How is that doneable in Cocoa?
Rdelmar's answer is probably the easiest way to go, but may not do exactly what you might want to do (which is replace the actual title with a pop up item, instead of having a popup button under the title in the toolbar area). With respect to functionality your application will probably work just as well using the toolbar.
If, however, you truly want to replace the actual title, the means of going about this would be to set the NSWindow title text to #"" to hide it, and redraw it by sticking in your own view.
[[[theWindow contentView] superview] addSubview:theSubview];
This basically tells the superview of the main content view to add another subview (direct "translation" from the code), and you'll have to tinker with the frame of this new subview to have it be positioned where the title should be positioned (as now it's free to be placed anywhere in the window frame, including on top of the title bar, as opposed to simply inside the content view).
theSubview can be your popup button, or whatever you want, and you'll also probably have to custom draw the popup button to match the original drawing of the window title.
You can do this by adding a toolbar to your window in IB. Once, you add the toolbar, you can double click on it to open the customizer view of it. Drag a popup button into the Allowable Toolbar Items area and after it is inserted there you can drag it into the bottom area which shows the layout of the toolbar -- you can also drag out any of the default items there that you don't want.