I want to be able to take screenshots of background applications while 1) making them appear active, and 2) not brining them to the foreground. Background windows have icons and title bars greyed out which is not ideal for taking a picture of your app.
I've been using SonOfGrab (https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/samplecode/SonOfGrab/Introduction/Intro.html) to capture screenshots, but it always shows all background applications as inactive (buttons, titlebar, etc. all greyed out).
Is there such a message that paints the window as active, but does not move it into the foreground?
For example here's an active Word:
Here's Word captured from Son of Grab:
Notice how all toolbar icons and title bar are no longer active. Looking to fix SonOfGrab to make these appear active, but without bringing the window to the foreground.
When a Windowed Application has the focus, it's immediately moved into the foreground.
You can make your app be like when it's in the foreground (design), but the "focus" can be given only once.
To take screenshots of apps looking active, run and keep your app in the foreground, like iTunes does with its "Mini Player" :
Take a look at setLevel: in NSWindow Class' Apple Documentation.
You can use these values in argument.
i.e, iTunes uses a thing like
window.level = Int(CGWindowLevelForKey(Int32(kCGMaximumWindowLevelKey)))
but, if you don't use swift, take a look on the links I gave and make some tests depending on what you want.
Then, run your app, open the app you wanna take a screenshot, and both will looks like "in the foreground".
Press Cmd + Shift + 4, then press space, and select the window you'd like to use.
Cheers!
Related
I've been trying to use FireFox as a simple window for a webpage that I will not be leaving, so I don't need the address-bar or close buttons, but I would like to keep my task bar visible (i.e. I do not want to simply go full screen). The gists of what I am trying to achieve is a "full window mode". Is there an add on that allows this? Preferably, I'd like an add on that can easily be turned on and off.
To elaborate, I may have the window only be half of the screen, so a full screen mode that leaves the task bar visible would not be sufficient.
You can come close to this with some simple JavaScript, just a bookmarklet, which will open the currently viewed URL in a window with most of the info/action bars hidden:
javascript:void(window.open(location.href,"_blank","outerWidth=1000,outerHeight=650,top=0,left=250,menubar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,personalbar=no,status=no"))
You can get close to maximized with specifying appropriate numbers for outerWidth=1000,outerHeight=650,top=0,left=250 which match your screen size, but you will not get quite what you can do when maximized.
You can then maximize the window. Which gives you:
Window.open requires chrome privileges in order to hide the titlebar and locationbar which means an add-on must do it. You can then use add-ons to get the rest of the way.
Using the Hide Caption Titlebar Plus add-on (with appropriate options selected) will get you to a maximized window of:
And with the addition of the add-on Hide Navigation Bar, maximized and hitting the default F2 to hide the locationbar you get:
Non-maximized:
You also asked that it provide removal of the various action/status/tool bars when not maximized. These add-ons will do so.
Easily turning them on and off:
Hide Navigation Bar only hides the location bar if you hit F2. Hide Caption Titlebar Plus is a restartless add-on and thus can be enabled/disabled at will from about:addons (Ctrl+Shift+A). It can also be set to mostly affect only maximized windows, so may not be something you need to enable/disable on a regular basis.
Personally, if this was something I wanted, I would set up a separate Firefox profile which has these add-ons and the home page as the one I wanted displayed. I would then set up a shortcut that automatically opens that page and shows what I want. You may need to use something like the add-on Session Manager to automatically restore the maximized window, but the default functionality in Firefox may be sufficient. In order to have a shortcut that brings up another Firefox profile automatically, you will need to set the Target to something like:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -no-remote -P "your profile name"
This would allow you to bring up the page you wanted with a single click and not have the configuration disturb your normal use of Firefox. It would also be something that you would not need to mess around with enabling/disabling on a regular basis.
Many ways to do this:
There are, probably, many different combinations of add-ons which will get you to a similar look. There is, perhaps, even a single one which will do so. You should do some research on your own to find a combination that works for you. For the profile I was initially using to test, I did not need the Hide Navigation Bar add-on to hide the locationbar as that functionality was covered in a different add-on. However, if starting with a stock profile these two add-ons will get you to where it sounds like you want to be.
Taskbar is visible:
For all of the above images: If I had taken a shot of my entire desktop, you would see that that the Windows Taskbar is still visible (the Firefox window is just maximized, not full-screen). The above images are not full-screen for privacy reasons. I do not desire to share the windows I have open and my taskbar configuration. If I have the time later, I will re-take the window shots as full-screen shots after a clean re-boot.
My Cocoa app displays a transparent window on the screen, but when the user tries to take a screenshot using Mac OS X's built-in screen capture key with the option of selecting full windows (Command-Shift-4, then Space Bar), my window gets highlighted as part of the possible windows to capture.
How can I tell my Window or App not to allow this? My Window already refuses to be the Main Window or Key Window through -canBecomeKeyWindow and -canBecomeMainWindow both returning NO, but this still happens.
The Window is also at the NSModalPanelWindowLevel and NSScreenSaverWindowLevel does the same thing.
Notice that every window is eligible for screenshots, even the desktop, dock and menu bar, which are special windows. You can even take a screenshot of the Exposé overlay window itself. This leads me to believe that there is no way to do this.
I suppose you could hook the Command+Shift+4 key event and hide the window, but that key combo is user-definable, so it is subject to change.
I have a desktop application written in Ruby that is using GTK2. It's just a small test application to play with GTK2, but I'm having problems achieving what I want to do. Is there any way using GTK2 to get at the titlebar (apart from setting the title), specifically to either add a button to it (beside the min/max/etc, B in the below diagram) or to add an option to the menu that pops up when you click the icon on the titlebar (A in the below diagram)?
I'm thinking there might not be because GTK is meant to work with many many different window managers, but I just wondered if there was. As a side question, what event does clicking the 'cross' button fire? At the moment if the user clicks that the window disappears but the program doesn't end - I need to capture that event and quit the program.
Thanks for any help, including hitting me over the head and telling me how silly I am.
Note that this is possible in GTK 3.10 and up, by using gtk_window_set_titlebar(). It replaces the window manager's title bar with a custom one. GtkHeaderBar is a good custom title bar class to use.
You can't, however, make it look just like the window manager would, because you won't know which window manager the user is running.
No, the title bar is owned by the window manager and you will typically not have direct access to it.
When the user tries to close the window by clicking the window manager's button, the window will receive the delete event.
I'm wondering how to dock / snap a window to the side of the screen in Windows, preferably with straight Win32 API. The effect I'm looking for is like the task bar -- a window that has a reserved space on screen, so that maximizing another window makes that window take up the rest of the screen, but leaves my window in place and visible.
I know various IM clients do this, but haven't been able to find any resources on how to do it. Not sure what the appropriate name for it is either.
Edit: "Application Desktop Toolbar" is the search term to use to find info on this.
IIUYC you're looking for an app bar (MS-officially "Application Desktop Toolbar"). You can indeed create these with the Windows API.
"App Bar" - you turn a window into an App Bar by sending the ABM_NEW message. Examples on MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc144177(VS.85).aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/134206
I would like to show the user a splash screen (a picture) while my Cocoa-based application launches. How would this be possible?
First thanks a lot. because my app running for a while time , so I want to show a splash before app running . Now if I show a window inside with a image , after that how to run the app? How to make sure that the app running after the splash showing ? How to do to get the sequence ?
First Thank you very much. And I show the window in applicationWillFinishLaunching method use orderFront,then hide it in applicationDidFinishLaunching: use orderOut,Now I found that the mainWindow not to show and the app terminate ,why ? How to do to resolute this question? Thanks!
Although Peter's answer is ultimately correct (you should rewrite your app to launch faster), sometimes that's not a practical option. For example loading code later in the application may take too long (e.g. a data acquisition application), forcing it to be loaded at startup. If you decide that you want to show a splash screen, the easiest way is to show it in the application delegate's applicationWillFinishLaunching: method. Create a splash window in your applications MainMenu.nib and add an outlet to your app delegate referencing that window. You can then put the window onscreen in applicationWillFinishLaunching: and hide it in applicationDidFinishLaunching:. Note that the main thread's NSRunLoop is not iterating during this time, so if you want to update the splash screen (with status, a progress bar, or such), you'll need to manage those redraw events yourself.
Again, think very hard about whether the long startup is necessary. If it is, showing a splash screen with a progess indicator is the minimum that you owe your users.
Why do you hate your users?
Seriously, don't do this. Don't make your users wait to use your app. Make your app launch quickly instead.
(And just in case you insist on an answer: Show a window with the image in it, then hide the window when you feel the user has waited long enough.)
Just put up a window with the image and close it when you are done with your launch initialization.
Barry's answer above does not seem to work for document-based apps. Showing a splash window within applicationWillFinishLaunching: interferes with the startup sequence of the app such that the document window isn't created. I've uploaded an example project here. In applicationWillFinishLaunching:, comment out [_splashWindow orderFront:self ] and the document window will come up.