I am using SWT tables in my project and there are few columns which are having longer strings which are not completely visible by default (for ex. path to a file location). Though I have tooltip to show the content and using mouse we can increase the column width to see the complete value.
Is there a way to do it with only keyboard usage?
Note: This question is more related to accessibility.
The following answer is based on my experience under windows. It can be different for other OS.
I'm afraid that there's no keyboard-only default way to adjust the size or reorder the column in a table, tree view or list view.
This is true not only with SWT but also with all other frameworks based on native win32 such as wxWidgets.
You must provide a keyboard-only way to resize and reorder columns yourself. here are a few ideas implemented by some applications:
Provide an option somewhere in the application that opens a dialog box with a checkbox list of the different columns. Ctrl+Up/Down to swap two items. Check/uncheck an item with spacebar to make the column visible or invisible.
Make the headers focusable. Use Shift+Left/Right to resize, Ctrl+Left/Right to swap two columns. Application key / Shift+10 opens a context menu where you can check/uncheck columns to show/hide and an option to open the column selection dialog box.
Some screen readers allow to do it by simulating mouse operation in some way. For example, use Jaws cursor, click lock on a header, release lock on the header to swap with.
But it's quite complicated, not always reliable, and thus very rarely actually used.
This is a very good question. I would be happy to give 100 rep to someone giving an answer being for windows and:
generic, working by default, everywhere or in most cases
Independant from screen readers (Jaws, NVDA, etc.) and techniques that simulates the mouse with keyboard (mouse keys)
Unfortunately, I don't think it exists.
I'm writing a small application in Windows using win32(vc++) and I want to create a different view based on the position of the taskbar. How can I check the position of taskbar in code like any api?
You can use the SHAppBarMessage() function with the ABM_GETTASKBARPOS message.
The taskbar may be displayed on multiple displays so in general it's not possible to retrieve a single rect that defines it's position. It may occupy discontiguous space.
Use EnumDisplayMonitors to enumerate the attached displays. Then for each display use GetMonitorInfo to obtain bounding and work area rectangles for the display. If there's a difference, then that difference is (usually) due to the taskbar. Remember that the taskbar can appear on multiple displays.
I say usually because you might have applications with app bars that reduce the working area. But I'm guessing that what you really want to do is display your program so that it does not overlap with the taskbar, and if you want to avoid overlapping the taskbar then you'll likely want to avoid overlapping app bars too.
I have just spet the last few hours trying to find the flag to use in Terminal to launch an app with the colored outlines around the various view elements to show how they are nested. I know that Matt Gemmell covered it during the Cocoa Face Off session of NSConference 2009 (at about the 13minute mark in the video). Unfortunately I can't actually read what he types and he doesn't speak the exact command. I know it has to be in the Apple docs somewhere but the search system is currently not being of any use. It looks like her just adds -showAllViews YES to the end of the command to open TextEdit but that command has no effect in 10.6.6. I have also tried every other capitalization I can think of as well as using view instead of views. Every command opens TextEdit just fine but doesn't show the colored outlines.
Use -NSShowAllDrawing and -NSShowAllDrawingColor:
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit -NSShowAllDrawing 200 -NSShowAllDrawingColor cycle
-NSShowAllDrawing sets the delay between drawing commands (allowing you enough time to see the drawing update)
-NSShowAllDrawingColor sets the fill colour for the regions with pending drawing operations (see class methods on for NSColor for valid values, or pass it "cycle" to loop through all available colours).
Answers.com has a taskbar application that when you ALT + mouse-click on a word in any program it will pop up a window with information pulled from their website.
My question is-- what are the actual programming mechanics and APIs used to do something like this? I don't have Windows application programming experience and am trying to figure out where to start. How do you access the current word pointed to by the mouse?
Anyone aware of any examples or open source software that does anything like this?
It's been a while and the last time I did something like this it was within my own wysiwyg editor so I had full access to all font characteristics needed to calculate which word was clicked by the mouse.
Maybe there's a n easy way to do this if all your apps are .NET or com or share some other framework which provides a way to retrieve this directly.
Via the API, I would look into hooking the keyboard and mouse messages so that your app can pre-process every mouse click on other applications - start with SetWindowsHookEx and read everything you can about hooking messages.
After getting your app to pre-process the messages, you then need to grab the text being clicked. Since text can be painted onto a device context in many different ways, you may be best off doing a screen scrape of the clicked area because the text may only exist as a bitmap. If this is the case, you have to perform some OCR to translate the scraped bitmap back into text. In other cases, the text may reside in the window as text - the WM_GETTEXT message may return this text from some types of windows (e.g. textboxes, buttons, etc.) but for normal windows, this message only return the title in the caption bar.
Sorry I don't have any definite answer, but this may get you started in the right direction.
Is there anything like Winsplit Revolution for Mac OS X?
Try these:
Zooom/2 ($15) has been my favorite since I installed it. Fast, flexible, and minimizes the number of key combinations I need to remember
Divvy ($15) might soon replace Zoom/2 for me. It's closer to Winsplit. You can arrange windows on a grid, define your own grid arrangements, and define your own shortcuts. It also minimizes the number of keystroke combinations you need to remember. BONUS: There are Mac and Windows versions, which means if you use both platforms you can use the same window management method across all your machines.
Breeze ($8) makes it easy to make windows fullscreen, split left, or split right. It also lets you save screen states (generic) and for specific apps.
Moom ($5) is a more recent entry. It supports both keyboard shortcuts and mouse shortcuts. For the mouse shortcuts, moving the cursor over the greeen zoom button displays a popup list of different layout options: full screen, left/right half, top/bottom half, or any of the corners.
SizeUp ($10) mimics various aspects of WinSplit functionality, but it relies on many keystroke combinations that take time to learn. The advantage is quickly moving windows. The drawback is that it uses up a lot of global keyboard shortcuts, and there are so many I couldn't remember them all.
Cinch ($7) is a mouse-driven app by the makers of SizeUp. Drag your window to various hot zones on the screen edges and the window will "cinch" to that edge and resize to fill half the screen. Similar to the built-in resizing feature in Windows 7.
MercuryMover ($20) is quite powerful and offers fine-grained control. However, there are a lot of different key combinations and, overall, I didn't find it as easy to learn or as elegant as WinSplit. I uninstalled it almost immediately. It struck me as powerful, but inefficient and unwieldy.
The DIY approach (free) mentioned in another post is to combine some applescripts and bind them to quicksilver triggers. I haven't tried this. But it is a free solution.
I found the weak window management one of the hardest things to cope with when I started using a Mac.
Why go beyond spaces and expose?
Winsplit significantly adds to what spaces and expose can do. I didn't understand the appeal until I actually used it. Before that, I thought virtual desktops (ie, like spaces) was enough. Now I consider it must-have functionality, especially on large monitors and multi-mon setups.
On my Windows machine running 3 monitors, I would rank the importance of these different apps in the following order:
Winsplit-like window rearranging
Spaces-like virtual desktops
Expose-like application switching
On my MacBook, I've learned to approach it the other way.
Expose-like application switching
Winsplit-like window rearranging
Spaces-like virtual desktops
From the Winsplit website I understand more or less the functionality; in the past I actually used to have my window manager (Waimea) configured to do exactly that in linux.
You may try using Quicksilver to trigger one of a custom set of applescripts; each applescript would resize and move the currently focused window to a predefined location.
See this macosxhints post for inspiration...
ShiftIt is a free option. Assignable hotkeys to resize to different portions of the screen (Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right, Full Screen and Center with current size)
Link to ShiftIt on github
Just click on the big download button towards the right of the screen.
Spectacle is a good option, its free and open source. And easy to use with keyboard shortcut :
Windows can be moved to a number of predefined regions of the screen:
Move to the left half ⌥⌘←
Move to the right half ⌥⌘→
Move to the top half ⌥⌘↑
Move to the bottom half ⌥⌘↓
Move to the upper left ⌃⌘←
Move to the lower left ⌃⇧⌘←
Move to the upper right ⌃⌘→
Move to the lower right — ⌃⇧⌘→
Another question on StackOverflow adresses the same issue
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/276760/tiling-window-manager-for-os-x
One answer provided links to an app called TwoUP. It's free, and does the job on OSX!
Thanks to Dong Hoon's answer, I have developed a hybrid solution. Using the AppleScript Editor, you can create scripts to resize the current window, like this:
tell application "System Events"
set _everyProcess to every process
repeat with n from 1 to count of _everyProcess
set _frontMost to frontmost of item n of _everyProcess
if _frontMost is true then set _frontMostApp to process n
end repeat
set _windowOne to window 1 of _frontMostApp
set position of _windowOne to {5, 0}
set size of _windowOne to {1150, 735}
end tell
such a script will work on a 13" MacBook. Using subtle variations of this script saved to /Users/[YourUserNameHere]/Library/Scripts, you can have configure the AppleScript Editor to show itself in the menu bar, where it will allow you to select a script to run.
Using several different scripts, I'm able to resize and reposition any window with only two clicks.
Hope this helps.
It looks like TwoUp is dead, but here are some other options:
Cinch ($7) is like Aero Snap for Mac.
Breeze ($8) allows you to save window states and restore them like a template to another window.
Divvy ($14) shows a grid on the screen where you can select boxes to indicate how you want the window to fill your screen.
I haven't used Winsplit, so I don't know how it compares, but an app I developed, Optimal Layout, offers very flexible window tiling, as well as moving and resizing from the keyboard:
http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/
You can also try Arrange application which features resize and reposition with keyboard shortcuts, on screen menu and by dragging window.
You should also try out secondbar. gives you an extra menubar at the second display + re-arrange options. See this link.
You can even try SplitScreenapp.com. It allows you to resize Mac Windows in many ways including full split, half split, drag and snap, etc.
I doubt it. Between Spaces and Expose, there's not much need for a third-party app to help manage multiple windows.