I'm working on some updates to my first Mac app and I'm trying to get my window's toolbar buttons to look like the toolbar buttons on EVERY standard Mac app. However, for the life of me, I can't find a button type or a barbutton type that gets me what I'm looking for. Am I missing something?
Here is an image showing several Mac apps (Preview, Finder, and Safari) with toolbars at the top which have very-slighty rounded corner buttons which also have a slight gradient on them, etc.
However, in my .xib I've got a toolbar and I've dropped every kind of button I can find on the thing and nothing looks like the standard Mac button.
The first button looks pretty close, but it's clearly not the same color. Am I missing something?
#Matt Ball is right - you can use NSSegmentedControls, even for single one-time click buttons. Just set the number of segments to 1, and set the mode to "Select None".
One of my shipping apps uses this technique, see below:
All of the controls there are NSSegmentedControl, including the single one.
Update: there are a few standard button icons which are meant for toolbars. The NSImage Class Reference has a list.
In the above screenshot, only two of the buttons are using built-in images: NSLeftFacingTriangleTemplate, and NSRightFacingTriangleTemplate. The others I drew myself.
Related
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?
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'm trying to create an application that would be as standard as possible in terms of style.
An image is worth a thousand words: I can't figure out how to make my buttons the same size as in Apple's programs such as Safari or Finder.
As you can see, the sizing I've set in interface builder don't seem to match the size the buttons get when I run the app, but maybe that part doesn't speak in pixels but in points or something? Also, textured rounded button has only width editable, but not height.
In this case, these are NSButtons, but I guess I'll have a similar problem with other control types...
I found it out! The problem was with neither of these two parts outlined in the screenshot, but in the "Toolbar" item, higher in the hierarchy.
There is a Size attribute in the Attributes inspector which defaults to Small, but you can set it to Regular instead, and then the buttons get the same sizing as in Finder and all.
In XCode 7, on a Swift 2 project, when I place a label onto the View, why is the label centred in XCode, but in the Simulator it's show off to the right?
This is just playing at the moment, where I don't want to play with constraints just yet (which I believe will be used later).
I had the same problem when working through a demo, and this worked for me. Try using the 4.7 inch size view controller:
Look in the middle left hand menu (the Document Outline), if not shown it’s under Editor > Hide Document Outline (a misnomer, clicking it will Show or Hide it).
Click on the View Controller so it's highlighted.
Click on the 4th tab of the right hand one (Utilities: the Attributes Inspector). If not shown it’s under View > Utilities > Show Attributes Inspector.
Under Simulated Metrics is a Size option to change from “Inferred” to “iPhone 4.7-inch”.
You'll need to realign things again, but now these should look central in the View and in the Simulator.
Constraints, when you want to get to them, will probably be more helpful in this regard.
I'm trying to add a "second row" after my NSToolbar in my app, that remains part of the title bar. As an example, Mail has a thin gray divider line below the NSToolbar with some extras items below that. Very specifically, when the window is put into fullscreen mode, that second "row" stays attached to the title bar as it slides down under the system menu bar. Xcode has a similar story.
I tried setting my NSWindow to textured and placing my second row controls directly in the content view of the window. While this mostly looks correct in windowed mode, those controls of course won't appear attached to the toolbar when it slides down in fullscreen mode. So how can I achieve the same behavior that Mail and Xcode do? I've looked at a lot of toolbar customization code but none of them really cover this specific case.
fullScreenAccessoryView is deprecated in macOS 10.10
In order to do this in recent versions of macOS, use the addTitlebarAccessoryViewController method on your NSWindow and pass in a subclass of NSTitlebarAccessoryViewController.
For example:
NSTitlebarAccessoryViewController *accessoryViewController = [[NSStoryboard storyboardWithName:#"Main" bundle:nil] instantiateControllerWithIdentifier:#"AccessoryViewController"];
[self.mainWindowController.window addTitlebarAccessoryViewController:accessoryViewController];
What I needed to do was call [NSToolbar setFullScreenAccessoryView:] on the view below my toolbar. This results in the behavior I was aiming for. See the NSToolbar documentation for this method.
First one is normal toolbar. For second toolbar you can create a separate view of your desired height and add it in the main landing-window.