I was wondering if there was a way to create a range slider for an OS X app in Cocoa. Basically it's just a regular slider with two buttons instead of one, so you can set a range (for a graph for example). I've seen a lot of custom range sliders for iOS (such as http://www.cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/rangeslider), but none for OS X.
The closest thing I could find was SMDoubleSlider, which doesn't seem to work at all in XCode 4.
Warning: I just learned the hard way that SMDoubleSlider uses private APIs that will not pass App Review. Don't use this class if you intend to distribute your app through the Mac App Store.
Of course it's possible, almost anything is, but you would have to do all the drawing and handling of the slider movement yourself.
I'm not sure what you mean about SMDoubleSlider not working in Xcode 4 -- I tried it out, and it worked fine for me. I didn't try the IB plugin stuff, I just imported the 4 files (SMDoubleSlider .h and .m and the slider cell files as well) and alloc init'ed it to create one and add it to my view. I was able to get and set the values of the hi and lo sliders.
If you're going to use it, just make sure you abide by the copyright restrictions, it is open source, but not public domain.
Related
I have a huge app in process, and since updating to Xcode 7.3, doing anything in storyboard is like molasses!!
About a month ago, I had about the same speed using one HUGE storyboard, so I split the project up into 5 separate storyboards, and Hallelujah, a hundred times faster!
But now, after updating, even dividing to 7; slow as can be!
I'm about to back up, then try and recreate one big one, then back up again, then divide again - to see if that does anything; but I am doubtful.
Anyone know how to fix this, or what is wrong with the latest update?
Well, not a great solution but, all I can determine is that; if the number of items and constraints in the view gets over a certain amount (using Xcode 7.3), the speed suddenly drops horribly.
So what I ended up having to do with this last storyboard (8 of 8) is to take a slide out side pane full of buttons and subviews, and place it in a container view - so that I could give it its own VC and thereby make it a stand alone 9th storyboard.
Not a great solution that's for sure, especially since I had to tie all of the buttons and methods to the parent view controller. I was lucky in this event in that the parent view (my main app map) is a single instance occurrence so I was able to reference it at launch, and merely prefix my former methods with the reference. If this was not so, I guess I would have to have done some serious protocol / delegation.
So, a proper solution (or 'fix' if it is Xcode's doing) is still wanting :)
For example, I wanted to have a popover or something that would let me choose from a table (say, like the periodic table, IPA chart, etc.…) in a similar style as a graphical NSDatePicker. In addition, how could I make it select multiple cells at once?
Is there already a default Cocoa way to do so? If not, from what class could such a thing be done and maybe some pointers on from where to proceed?
(I apologize if this is another common question, but I couldn't find it on my own.)
It is very surprising, but on a lot of points, I think that OSX's GUI is very limited unlike iOS.
So, I'm afraid that you have to create your own component from scratch.
Or you can have a look at these open-source controls written for OSX :
For choosing a date : You can use MLCalendarView (Calendar-OSX) available on Github.
For displaying a TableView, with multiple selections (very similar to UITableView) : you can use this great open-source component : PXListView available on Github.
I have a simple form (NSWindow) with 3 text fields. NSWindow's initialFirstResponder is 'pointing' to the first field (NSTextField). All three text fields are circularly linked to each other via nextKeyView.
Problem that I have is that when I start the application from Xcode it'll focus on the text field that was last active (in focus) when the application closed.
So for example, if I name text fields A, B and C and initialFirstResponder is set to A. Now if I start the application, focus on B, and close the application, next time I start it, the focus will be on B.
Why is that and how would I fix this?
(Sorry if this is a trivial question, these are my first steps in cocoa...)
EDIT:
This is on OS X Lion 10.7.1, Xcode 4.1.
EDIT 2:
I found a way to "fix" this... In the main window (or any window for that matter) XIB/NIB file, click on "Attributes Inspector", then uncheck "Restorable" box. Now the application will not store the last position and so the initialFirstResponder seeing will be respected and followed accordingly.
Welcome to Cocoa! :) I suspect this is happening as part of the new user interface preservation features in OS X Lion. (In fact, I just created a simple app with 3 text fields, and I see this behavior too.) Because windows automatically restore themselves, you will see a lot of this behavior happening automatically even if you didn't implement it. This is probably desirable — most applications will work this way, and the user will come to expect it.
However, if you really want to disable it, you can probably do so by subclassing NSWindow or perhaps NSTextField and overriding -encodeRestorableStateWithCoder:. But, I definitely recommend you leave the default behavior alone.
Edit with a little further information: the app state seems to be stored in ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.yourapp.savedState. There you can see a plist file with information about the windows. The other files don't seem easily readable, but they probably contain information about which field is first responder, etc.
Despite this thread being almost 10 years old I'll gonna add an answer. Just about one month after the answer from jbandes OS X 10.7 Lion was introduced.
Following a quote from NSWindowRestoration.h
#interface NSWindow (NSUserInterfaceRestoration)
/* Determines whether the window should be restored on relaunch. By default, windows with NSTitledWindowMask set in the styleMask are restorable, and windows without it set are not.
*/
#property (getter=isRestorable) BOOL restorable API_AVAILABLE(macos(10.7));
I'm trying to create a very simple selection list widget based on NSOutlineView. However, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to display an icon and a label right next to it, which is really the expected behavior in all the mainstream implementations of that kind of widget out there (iTunes, mail, Finder,...).
So far I am just binding two separate cells, but then when I'm expanding the tree, the icon cell grows larger and a gap appears between the icon and its accompanying label. I know I can probably overcome this problem by extending NSCell and provide a custom class, but as what I'm trying to achieve is really the standard thing, I can't be resigned to accept that there isn't a simpler solution.
Candide
Sadly, there isn't a 'text and icon' cell that you can just use, fresh out of the box as you would like. However, when I was working on a project, I found that Apple released some sample code that implements this, since it is such a common idiom.
This can be found here, specifically ImageAndTextCell.h/m
It can help teach you about UI customization by reading through this example, but scratching that, just dropping the ImageAndTextCell straight into your project should do just fine.
You need to create ImageAndTextcell to combine text and icon..
you can create ImageAndTextcell like this Sample Project
How would I go about implementing something along the lines of "scrubby sliders", like in Photoshop and quite a few other image-processing applications?
They are slightly hard to describe.. basically you have a regular numeric input-box, but you can click-and-hold the mouse button, and it functions like a slider (until you release). If you click in the box, you can select text, edit/paste/etc as usual.
The Photoshop docs describe it, and I put together a quick example video (an example of the sliders in Shake)
Another similar implementation would be the jog-wheel in Final Cut Pro, which functions similarly, without the numeric readout being underneath.
I can't seem to find any mention of implementing these, although there is probably alternative names for this. It is for a OS X 10.5 Cocoa application.
It is for a colour-grading application, where a user might need to make tiny adjustments (0.001, for example), to huge adjustments (say, -100 +100) on the same control. A regular slider isn't accurate enough over that range of value.
Copy-and-pasting values into the box would be a secondary concern to scrubbing the values, and the Photoshop/Shake setup really well. The unobviousness of the control is also of a low concern, as it's not a "regular desktop application"
I've encountered those. They suck, because they prevent the user from dragging to select the text of the number.
A better idea would be a miniature slider beneath the field that expands to a full-size slider when the user holds down the mouse button on it and collapses back to its miniature size when the user releases the mouse button. This way, the selection behavior is still available, but you also provide the slider—and in a more obvious way.
There's no built-in class in Cocoa for either one. You'll have to implement your own.
I doubt that this exists in Cocoa framework. As far as I remember it is not mentioned in the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.
You can develop one yourself by using a custom view and tracking mouse events (-mouseDown:, mouseUp:, -mouseDragged:).