I am currently working on a Swift/Cocoa application for MAC OS, and I am new to this stack of technologies. I am faced with the need to find the right controls to create the following window:
I am using xCode (the latest version that is not beta). I'd like to ask your advice on:
What control (s) should be preferred for the left-hand side area (NSTableView? - but how can I bind separate lines to some actions in this case? e.g. transitions between storyboard views) and the right-hand side one? Also, I am not sure how this selection in the left-hand side area could be implemented if I don't use a table.
This application assumes all windows of the fixed size with some navigation between them. Could I use a storyboard for that purpose?
How can I draw this arrow pointing to the bottom from the topmost gray area?
Since all the windows share the left-hand side area, can I create a sort of user control (like in ASP.NET WebForms) that could be reused across the app?
Also, I'd appreciate any examples that you could suggest. The only ones that I have found so far are in Objective-C (while I have to use Swift) and a bit outdated. No similar layout has been found (I have been looking into the Apple Development website).
Please don't hesitate to ask any questions.
I’m risking this question getting closed as “not constructive / argumentative”, as there is no single definitive answer that I’m looking for… but I hope we can make this work. Bear with me.
So. Let’s talk about Mac apps. Cocoa and AppKit are the workhorses on Mac desktop, that can be used to construct classic-looking Mac UI-s. Here’s an example.
The iTunes preferences dialog is a classic-looking Mac UI. Standard toolbar, checkboxes, sliders, separators, buttons. Mac engineers know how to make these, and it’s easy and fun these days with AutoLayout & co.
More recently, though, another style of Mac apps is emerging, that I’d call “modern” apps. In particular, I’m interested in document-based apps, where the document is single-window, decorated with crisp-looking sidebars and other components. Here are two examples (Sketch and Pages).
I’m interested in ideas about how these UI-s are constructed, and what kind of components are used. Is AppKit sufficient to achieve this? I read somewhere, but can’t recall the reference, that iWork these days largely forgoes AppKit and the UI just consists of a bunch of hand-drawn CALayers. I’m not so much interested in the document canvas (a whole another subject) as I am in the sidebar, toolbar and their contents.
OK, let’s try to salvage this question with some specific subquestions…
General window composition for both apps—is it NSToolbar on top, and NSSplitView in the body area, or something more?
Sketch tree view on the left—can I achieve this with NSOutlineView, or is there something more going on?
Pages sidebar—what kind of AppKit components are used here, vs custom drawing? (One curious fact that tells me that custom drawing is going on—when I expand/collapse the “Spacing” or “Bullets & Lists” sections, there is no animation.)
Don't be fooled by current design choices. IMHO we're building apps the same way we always did it, albeit single window interfaces became more popular in recent years.
But that's just a matter of whether you stuff your NSView subclasses in subviews or dedicated windows.
The views themselves shouldn't care at all - in a good application design.
The apps you've mentioned use a mixture of custom and standard controls.
Like apps always did - back to the days of NextStep (or System 7).
Is there a OSS custom control or source code sample for doing something like the iOS Picker controls on Mac OS X (the spinning barrel thingie)?
A bit of research on the web and sites like http://www.cocoacontrols.com didn't turn up anything..
I realize that the paradigm will be awkward for many scenarios however it'll be ideal in terms of screen estate (and design) for the casual app I'm working on.
Any hints appreciated.
You might want to think about customizing available controls to create a spinning barrel effect. Haven't tried, but it might be overkill. I might think of using buttons with text for the contents (or a table view with custom cells), and/or a scroll view with animation for a scroll event. It might be a useful customization for Mac OS X, without consideration for the fact that UIPickerView was meant for a touch screen.
Edit: This might be a start in the direction you want to be going. -> https://gist.github.com/1558664
I'm new to cocoa app dev, and I'm searching a solution to create a windows like the tweetie main windows with a left tool bar and a panel that point to the selected icon.
like this screenshot : http://i.stack.imgur.com/qvxWu.jpg
could anyone help me?
It's likely that a lot of the Tweetie UI is implemented using custom controls. You'll want to look into subclassing NSView and how to handle drawing and mouse events. There's nothing built into the Cocoa framework for this.
The NSView documentation has info on view programming, drawing, and event handling. If you're new to Cocoa, you may want to start off with something built in, though, as this will be a lot of work (and requires a pretty good understanding of how the framework works).
I'm from a Windows programming background when writing tools, but have been programming using Carbon and Cocoa for the past year. I have introduced myself to Mac by, I admit it, hiding from UI programming. I've been basically wapping my OpenGL code in a view, then staying in my comfort zone using my platform agnostic OpenGL C++ code as usual.
However, now I want to start porting one of my more sophisticated applications to Mac OS.
Typically I use the standard Visual Studio dockable MDI approach, which is excellent, but very Windows-like. From using a Mac primarily now for a while, I don't tend to see this sort of method used for Mac UIs. Even Xcode doesn't support the idea of drag and drop/dockable views, unfortunately. I see docked views with splitter panels, but that's about it.
The closest thing I've seen to the Visual Studio approach is Photoshop CS4, which is pretty nice.
So what is the general consensus on this? Is there are more Mac-like way of achieving the same thing that I haven't seen? If not, I'm happy to write a window manager in Cocoa myself, so that I can finally delve in an learn what looks like an excellent API.
Note, I don't want to use QT or any other cross-platform libraries. The whole point is that I want to make a Mac app look like a Mac app, leave the Windows app looking like a Windows app. I always find the cross-platform libraries tend to lose this effect, and when I see a native Mac UI, with fancy Cocoa transitions and animations, I always smile. It's also a good excuse for me to learn Cocoa.
That being said, if there is an Open Source Cocoa library to do this, I'd love to know about it! I'd love to see how someone else achieves this, and would help smooth the Cocoa learning curve.
Cheers,
Shane
UPDATE: I forgot to mention a critical point. I support plugins, which can have their own UI to display various plugin specific information. I don't know which plugins will be loaded and I don't know where their UI will live, if I don't support docking. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this, specifically: How do I support a plugin view architecture, if the UI can't change? Where do I put the plugin views?
Coming from a Windows background, you feel the need to have docking windows, but is it really essential to the app? Apple's philosophy (in my opinion) is that the designer knows better than the user how things should look and work. For example, iTunes is a pretty sophisticated app, but it doesn't let you change the UI around, change the skin, etc., because Apple wants to keep it consistent. They offer the full view, the mini player, and a handful of different viewing options, but they don't let you pull the source list off into a separate window, or dock it in other positions. They think it should be on the left, so there it stays...
You said you "want to make a Mac app look like a Mac app", and as you pointed out, Mac apps don't tend to have docking windows. Therefore, implementing your own docking windows is probably a step in the wrong direction ;)
+1 to Ken's answer.
From a user perspective unless its integral to the app like it is in Adobe CS or Eclipse i want everything as concise as possible and all the different options and displays out of my way so i can focus on the document.
I think you will find with mac users that those who have the "user skill" to make use of rearranging panels will in most cases opt for hot key bindings instead, and those who dont have that level of "skill" youre just going to confuse.
I would recommend keeping it as simple as possible.
One thing that's common among many Mac apps is the ability to hide all the chrome and focus on your content. That's the point behind the "tic tac" toolbar control in the top right corner of many windows. A serious weakness of many docking UIs is that they expect you to have the window take up most of the screen, because the docked panels can obscure content. Even if docked panels are collapsable, the space left by them is often just wasted and filled with white space. So, if you build a docking panel into your interface, you should expect it to be visible most of the time. For example, iTunes' source list is clearly designed to be visible all the time, but you can double-click a playlist to open it in a new window.
To get used to the range of Mac controls, I'd suggest you try doing some serious work with some apps that don't have a cross-platform UI; for example, the iWork apps, Interface Builder or Preview. Take note of where controls appear and why—in toolbars, in bottom bars, in inspectors, in source lists/sidebars, in panels such as IB's Library or the Font and Color panels, in contextual HUDs. Don't forget the menu bar either. Get an idea of the feel of controls—their responsiveness, modality, sizing, grouping and consistency. Try to develop some taste—not everything is perfect; just try iCal if you want to have something to make fun of.
Note that there's no "one size fits all" for controls, which can be an issue with docking UIs. It's important to think about workflow: how commonly used the control would be, whether you can replace it with direct manipulation, whether a visible indication of its state is necessary, whether it's operable from the keyboard and mouse where appropriate, and so forth. Figure out how the control's placement and behavior lets the user work more efficiently.
As a simple example of example of a good versus bad control placement and behavior in otherwise-decent applications, compare image masking in OmniGraffle and Keynote. In OmniGraffle, this uses the Image inspector where you have to first click on an unlabeled button ("Natural size") in order to enable the appropriate controls, then adjust size and position away in a low-fidelity fashion with an image thumbnail or by typing percentages into fields. Trying to resize the frame directly behaves in a bizarre and counterintuitive fashion.
In Keynote, masking starts with a sensibly named menu item or toolbar item, uses a HUD which pops up the instant you click on a masked image and allows for direct manipulation including a sensible display of the extent of the image you're masking. While you're dragging a masked image around, it even follows the guides. Advanced users can ignore the HUD entirely, just double-clicking the image to toggle mask editing and using the handles for sizing. It should be easy to see, with a few caveats (e.g. the state of "Edit Mask" mode should be visible in the HUD rather than just from the image; the outer border of the image you're masking should be more effectively used) Keynote is substantially better at this, in part because it doesn't use an inspector.
That said, if you do have a huge number of options and the standard tabbed inspector layout doesn't work for you, check out the Omni Group's OmniInspector framework. Try to use it for good, and hopefully you'll figure out how to obsess over UI as much as you do over graphics now :-)
(running in slow motion, reaching out in panic) Nnnnnoooooooo!!!!!
:-) Seriously, as I mentioned in reply to Ken's excellent answer, trying to force a "Windowsism" on an OS X UI is definitely a bad idea. In my opinion, the biggest problem with Windows UI is third-party developers inventing new and inconsistent ways of presenting UI, rather than being consistent and following established conventions. To a Mac user, that's the sign of a terrible application. It's that way for a reason.
I encourage you to rethink your UI app's implementation from the ground up with the Mac OS in mind. If you've done your job well, the architecture and model (sans platform-specific implementation) should clearly translate to any platform.
In terms of UI, you've been using a Mac for a year, so you should have a pretty good idea of "the norm". If you have doubts, it's best to post a question specifically detailing what you need to present and your thoughts on how you might do it (or asking how if you have no idea).
Just don't whack your app with the ugly stick by forcing it to behave as if it were running in Windows when it's clearly not. That's the kiss of death for an app to Mac users.