How to show different views in same window in cocoa? - macos

Is it possible to do navigation within the same window in a mac application ?(Like it is possible in ios apps).I want to show each view in the same window instead of opening different windows on a button click.
e.g When a user clicks a button then the next page should be loaded in the same window.(The next page will have nothing in common with the current page.)

You may use Tab View for easy switching between views on a same window.
UPDATE:
You may also customize your tab view , make it tabless (In the attributes inspector set style to tabless) and use your buttons to switch between views.
You may take help from the following link : http://devcry.heiho.net/2012/01/nstabview-tutorial.html
OR
You may add or remove subviews from your window on button clicks, using
[[yourWindow contentView] addSubview: yourSubview]; // Add subview to window
[yourSubview removeFromSuperview]; //Remove subview
UPDATE:
Steps to swap between views using a tabless tab view.
Drag a NSTabView to your xib.
Set the no. of tabs in attribute inspector to no. of views you want.
Design each view of the tab as per your requirement.
Now in the attribute inspector of tabview, set style to tabless.
Now drag the buttons you want to use for swapping between views. Suppose Button0 and Button1 are for 1st and 2nd view of your tab view.
Create a IBOutlet for your NSTabView in your .h file. Bind it to the referencing outlet of you tabview.
IBOutLet NSTabView* tabview;
Set a IBAction for both your buttons in your .h class file.
In the button action method for button1, use
- (IBAction)button1clicked:(id)sender
{
[tab selectTabViewItemAtIndex:0];
}
Similarly in button2 action method use:
[tab selectTabViewItemAtIndex:1];
In this way you can have any no. of views and you may select any view on button click using
[tab selectTabViewItemAtIndex:(index of the view you want to load)];

In general you want to google for view swapping.
There are tons of examples out there. Some from Apple and lots elsewhere.
Much of it is very similar to iOS.
You need to read the docs a bit too.
Understand NSView and how to load views from nibs, how to create view objects in code, how to add a subview and how to remove a view.
There are many approaches to having different views for different reasons. The right approach is a combination of style, experience and what your app actually needs to do.
Cocoa includes NSBox, NSTabView, and lots of others. Those two can be configured to not display any visual indication that they are containers.
You will also need to understand at least a little about NSWindow to understand its content view (the root container of other views generally)

Related

How to place objects in tab view in a Xcode mac app?

How do I place objects (i.e. labels or buttons) in a tab view in an Xcode mac app, so that when I click on a different tab the associated objects appear.
For example, I want to be able to put some labels in a tab called "Data" and some buttons in a tab called "Choice". When I press "Data" I want the labels to appear, but the buttons to not, and the other way around as well.
Is there an easy way to do this? Do I need to make a different class for each tab?
Each of the NSTabView's tab consists of as NSView. Here either you can draw all the buttons, labels or any other controls. Even you can add your new view from same xib or load it from other xib.
In the following image you can see, I have used a tabview with two tabs and in the object view you can see two views having two different static text.
And the tab change/click event is fired automatically you dont need to worry about it, the view will be loaded on tab click/change.
Use the built in cocoa view NSTabView which you can find in interface builder:
Each tab has its own view where you can place your objects.

Xcode - Nested storyboard views - hide/show?

I have a reasonably complicated UIView which contains several nested views which are displayed according to a variety of responses - all are laid out in a storyboard.
Is there a way to hide a view in the foreground to work on a view in the background? As its really fiddly selecting particular elements to arrange / style!?
I've been trying to figure out a nice way to do this, some function like hiding the view and its subviews from the storyboard (not from the actual application), but couldn't find anything.
This is not the nicest of ways but it is how I do it at the moment...
What I do is select the views I want to "hide" from the document outline and add a constant (screen width/height) value to its x/y origin value to push them out of the screen. I also change the document label for those views (Identity Inspector > Document > Label) to something like "Hidden" so I can later search for the "hidden" views from the document outline and put them back where they belong.
I have 2 work arounds.
A) Change the View Controllers size to freeform. Set its size to be really large so I can space out the views.
B) Use the sort order of the views Document Outline (lowest is front most) and add an image view (same as the view background) under the first view to block the others. Then delete it after finishing my edits.
or xcode developers could just simple add a design-visible checkbox for views and controls.... but ill take my rants somewhere else.
In xcode 7 you can do it from the storybord
for more details
https://stackoverflow.com/a/25213491/4879683
Maybe this could help you :
Open your storyboard in the Finder and edit it with a simple text editor (not xcode).
You will see it's just a xml file.Look for the view you want to hide, and add hidden="YES" in the parameters list.
That's what I do on my own project.
In Xcode when you select your storyboard, you have a panel that displays all your view controllers and their hierarchy. If you change the order of the elements you change the background/foreground order.
You can add extra views to the scene dock.
These views get initiated along with the view controller, but are not added to the view controller's view hierarchy. You can reference them using IBOutlets.
e.g. I have a full screen loading view that I added to the scene dock instead of covering up the view controller in the storyboard. I can add the loading view to the view controller's view hierarchy in code:
#IBOutlet weak var loadingView: UIView!
...
loadingView.frame = view.bounds
loadingView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizing.FlexibleWidth.union(UIViewAutoresizing.FlexibleHeight)
view.addSubview(loadingView)
Reference: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/recipes/xcode_help-IB_storyboard/Chapters/AddViewsToDock.html

Xcode tableview hidden behind navigation bar

Can anyone please tell me how to fix the following issue.
I am building an iPhone app using Storyboard. I have a Navigation Controller as root view and off that a view controller. On this I have a few buttons that when clicked takes you to a table view controller. All fine and well, but when I link the buttons to their respective table views, the top navigation bar obscures the top cell in the table view controller.
Does anyone know why this is happening and how I can fix it?
Also it seems to have thrown off my layouts from the view controller from which they inherit.
See attached image for a better explanation perhaps.
I believe this is the intended behavior when using the translucent navigation bar. It's semi transparent specifically so that you can see items pass behind it (e.g. a table scrolling). If you don't want this, changing the navigation bar's style to opaque should solve the problem.
Since I wanted to keep the translucence, I just added a UIView between the navigation controller and the prototype cell (width of the view, height 60). That way the first cell in the table starts beneath the navigation bar but I can still see the scrolling underneath.
This is a bug/feature in IB when you use a translucent navigation bar, the content view runs under the navigation bar. For non transparent bars the content view begins after the bar. If your content view is a UIScrollView (UITableView is a descendent of UIScrollView) the content will be automatically scrolled so as to not be hidden under the navigation bar. So the problem only exist in IB when you run the app everything should be ok.
You just need go to the Navigation Controller properties, then Simulated Metrics, and change the Top Bar to be a Transluscent Navigation Bar WITH PROMPT. And that should be it. No need for that extra UIView

Standard Back Button in XCode (XIB)

I can't get the standard back button of iOS into a navigationBar because I can't find it in the Object Library, so can I do it with code or something else?
I just want the normal, standard, blue back button - you know which I mean.
To "automatically" have a back button you need first have a UINavigationController. Then you need to take a different UIViewController and add it as the root view controller in UINavigationController's init method:
UINavigationController *navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:someOtherViewController];
Be sure to also set a title for someOtherViewController, usually in it's viewDidLoad or initializer. I'll tell you why this is important in a second:
self.title = #"Some other VC";
Then take a second UIViewController and push it onto your navigation controller:
[navigationController pushViewController:anotherViewController animated:YES];
You now have two UIViewControllers on your navigation stack: someOtherViewController and anotherViewController.
Your view will now have a back button with "Some other VC" in it. This is the title of the view controller that was just moved out of view:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UINavigationController_Class/Reference/Reference.html
http://simplecode.me/2011/09/04/an-introduction-to-uinavigationcontroller/
I would also suggest reading up on how UINavigationControllers work and searching this site a bit more for customizing the back button. There are plenty of threads about it.
You can't add the back button yourself. The back button is part of the Navigation controller. If you embed a Navigation controller into your view(s), the back button will appear and be populated by the name of the previous view.
If you're using storyboards select your view controller, then in top menu choose "editor" -> "embed in" -> "navigation controller".
Edit: Here is an exmaple.
I'm running Xcode 7.2. This was driving me crazy, but I figured it out. Here are all the pieces you need to make the Back button appear (make a test project to prove it):
1) You have to have a Navigation Controller and it has to be set to be the initial view controller. So add the Navigation Controller, you will import two tables. Click on the Navigation Controller and on the properties list, check the box that reads "Is Initial View Controller". You will now see and arrow pointing to this view.
2) In our case we want a ViewController and not the included / connected TableViewController, so delete the TableViewController (RootController) and add a new ViewController.
3) Connect the Navigation Controller to the new ViewController by clicking on the top bar of the Navigation controller and orange circle with the arrow pointing left. Hold the Control button on your keyboard down and click and drag from the orange circle to the ViewController and let go. When given the list of options on how to connect the two views, select 'root view controller'.
Done! Now you the functioning navigation bar and you automatically get the back arrow on all segues added. Test this. Add another ViewController and connect to it with a button on the existing ViewController. Use the Control-click-drag approach from the button to the newest ViewController. Select the 'show' option for the new segue you created.
Run it. You'll see the back option has automatically appeared when you click the button and moved to the newest ViewController.
This is all provided by the Navigation Controller, but only when you make another controller the RootController. Happy navigating!

I need to customize tabBar

In my project I have two Views with TabBar and I would like to customize each one with different images.
Can anyone know how to do this?
If you are wishing to customize the tabs in your tab bar, that can done by creating a UITabBarItem using the init method below and assigning it to the tabBarItem property of each navigation controller that goes into your tab bar controller. This will display the given titles and images on each tab.
navigationController.tabBarItem = [[UITabBarItem alloc] initWithTitle:#"title"
image:[UIImage imageNamedB:#"tabImage.png"]
tag:0];
Osvaldo, If you want two different backgrounds for the two different view controllers of your tab bar project you have a couple of options. But I would do the following. Grab a UIView from the object library and place one in each vc so that it fills the whole view. Next you can place UIImageViews in the UIView you just placed. Four in the one vc and five in the other. Place them and size them to however you wish. You then need to import the pictures you want to place in them. Drag the image files into the left pane, the project outline. Make sure you copy to destination so they are a part of your project. Next in the vc's click on the UIImageView that you want the picture in. On the right pane under attributes there will be a drop down menu called image. Select the image you want and it will appear in the storyboard in the vc. Do this for all the UIImageViews that you have. When on storyboards, you can pop out the storyboard outline. Make sure the UIImageViews are within the UIView. Then select the UIView in the outline and go up to the editor menu, and select arrange, send to back. It may be grayed out if the UIView was the only thing you had on the vc in the beginning. So now, this UIView will act as a background, and you can customize them to look like anything you like. Hope this helps, let us know how it goes. If it works, please accept my answer, any other questions, just ask.

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