How can I blend in my SegmentedControl in a UITableView better? - user-interface

As you can see on the screenshot the segmented control is placed rather ugly this way.
I need it in that place, meaning below the section title and before the second cell for that section. How could I make this better?

I can think of two suggestions that would improve the appearance. The first would be to increase the height of the table cell (just that particular table cell, not all of the cells in your table) so that the whitespace margin at the top and bottom of your segmented control is equal to the margin you currently have on the left and right of the control.
Another solution would be to move the selection of the value for this setting into a separate tableView controller that you drill down to. So that cell would show the current value, but tapping the cell would take the user to a new view where the user could select to change the value.
Here is an example of this from the Instapaper app settings page that I think looks pretty clean.

Related

Cells don't resize when user resizes NSTableViews columns?

I have found that the text in a table view doesn't grow when the user resizes the column. (Or for that matter shrink if he shrinks the column, because the truncation ellipses then vanish.) Having gathered that this is something to do with constraints, my solution has been to uncheck Use Auto Layout (in the xib's file inspector). Not a big deal, but it comes just when I was beginning to think I might have mastered Autolayout.
Is that really the only way to do this?
The table is view-based, and gets its data from Core Data via an array controller. The text is displayed in an NSTextField.
It is as you have found out yourself.
If you want to know/learn more about NSTableview-behavior search for "TableViewVariableRowHeights" and "TableViewLinks" in Apples documentation and download the samples.
This question appears to be answered in:
How to Expand NSTableCellView Width When Resizing Column in NSTableView
summary: add horizontal constraints to the table view cell
see the link for screenshots

How do you use NSScrollView with auto layout?

Ok. I've been at this over and over. I've seen blogs and cocoa dev threads.
I've seen Kyle Sluder's proposed solution, but have yet to find a solution that really works.
How can you position subviews of an NSScrollView with auto layout?
Is it just silently broken ?
Nothing seems to work.
Ok, old question, but this particular issue is a personal bugbear of mine so I'll answer it anyway!
The first thing to note is that an NSScrollView contains an NSClipView, which itself has a view outlet called documentView. These are all added for you when you drag a new scroll view into your storyboard or nib file. By default, the document view is an NSView called simply "View". If you're using a custom view, you can just select this and set its type in the inspector on the right to whatever you want. Otherwise, you'll be adding subviews to it.
The big thing that is easy to miss here is that, by default, the document view has its layout set to 'Translates Mask Into Constraints'. This is fine if the content size will never, ever change, and if that's the case you can simply set the frame of the document view to whatever you want and leave it at that. If you want it to automatically resize itself to fit its content however, there's a few things you'll need to do.
First off, that document view needs to have a completely unambiguous size. If you're using a custom view, I'd recommend giving it an intrinsicContentSize. You should also set 'Intrinsic Size' in IB's inspector to 'Placeholder' and give it a suitable value, or you'll get a bunch of autolayout warnings. If your document view gets its size from its content, all of the subviews must be linked in an unbroken chain from top to bottom, and from left to right, such that the content knows exactly how big it ought to be. This is quite an art in itself, so I won't go into it. A simple example where you have only one subview would be to pin its top, bottom, leading and trailing constraints to its parent, but as noted above if you're doing this, you might as well just set the type of the document view.
Now the fun bit. Select your document view and set its layout to 'Automatic'. Next, add top, bottom, leading and trailing constraints to its superview with a suitable value. I'm using zero, but you might want a small border. Finally, select the TRAILING and BOTTOM constraints you just made and set them to '>=' (greater than or equal) and a priority of 500 or less. The priority is very important, as it has to be less than the priority that the clip view uses to determine its own minimum size. Too high and the clip view will be forced to remain larger than its content, making it impossible in turn for the scroll view to be smaller than its content, rendering it useless.
The technical details aren't important. Just remember to set the document view to layout: automatic, pin all edges, and make the trailing and bottom constraints >= and priority 500.
Note that this will cause your content to hug the top-left corner.
Have you tried setting the document view's setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints to TRUE?
[_scrollView.documentView setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:YES];

VB / C#: Resizing two controls equally

I have made a window in which I will be having two groups/panels and some buttons in between them. I want to code the resizing behavior in a way that when the window expands, the two panels increase their widths while keeping the distance between them constant.
Please see this mockup:
As you see above, I want the 'Local' and 'Server' Panels to resize while keeping the distance in between them same. If I use anchors (Top+Left+Right+Bottom), the left panel will overlap the right one and the right's width one will go out of the window. I want them to share the increased width of the window equally.
As for the buttons in between, I have kept ancors as Top only. By removing Left anchor from button, it automatically places itself in the center of the window when window is expanded, which is just the way I want it to be.
Any ideas how to manage resizing of panels?
Thanks.
Use the TableLayoutPanel control.
First add the TableLayout to the Form and set its Dock() property to Fill.
Next you'll need to setup 3 columns and two rows. Add the two buttons to the middle column with each one is in its own row. Afterwards, setup the column values so they are like this:
Leave the rows at 50% on both.
Now add your two GroupBoxes to the 1st and 3rd columns in the 1st row.
For both GroupBoxes, set Dock() to Fill, and RowSpan() to 2.
For the top Button, turn on only the Bottom Anchor.
For the bottom Button, turn only the Top Anchor.
For the TableLayoutPanel, set Padding() to 5,5,5,5.
Here is what it looked like when I was all done:
Resize the window and observe how the controls behave...

NSTableView with Plus and Minus buttons

How can I do something like that?
I didn't find any appropriate object in the Interface Builder library.
Any thoughts?
The best way that i found is to use NSSegmentedControl.
after you dragged it on the canvas, you should configure its style:
Style: Small Square
Mode: Select Momentary
looks better. Now use "image" field to set NSAddTemplate and NSRemoveTemplate. Make sure that label field is empty.
Ok, we have "+", "-" and one empty segment. To prevent the latest one to be selected by the user, select it from Segment: pop up and turn off Enabled check box (located next to State: label).
And lastly, what we have to do is set width of first two segments to make them square.
Go to Size inspector
Select Segment 0
Turn off "Fixed" checkbox (segment should immediately autoresize to fit image)
Select Segment 1 and repeat number 3
Now as you resize control, only last segment will change width
Put it at the bottom of your table view and resize as well.
Enjoy ;)
Update for OSX Yosemite
I tried to achieve the same look as Mail.app has in the Accounts view (right window on my screenshot).
I did achieve the desired result by following the steps below:
Add a NSSegmentedControl
Add two segments and set the image to each:
NSAddTemplate for the + button
NSRemoveTemplate for the - button
Set the size of the segments to fixed and set the value to 32 pixels
The rectangle next to the buttons is a NSButton with the style Gradient.
The Button is enabled but Refuses First Responder is set to true so that it is not clickable.
Use a NSButton with a gradient style, and for the images use the system provided NSAddTemplate and NSRemoveTemplate.
One answer here suggests using gradient buttons, however these buttons cannot be disabled as this causes the background to change and thus breaks the look. Another one suggested using a segmented control, which is almost perfect but segmented controls don't support autoresizing, e.g. if the table width is dynamic. My suggestion is a combination of both. Use a segmented control for the actual buttons and a gradient button to fill the rest of the table width that now can also be dynamic if the button width is dynamic as well.
See my answer to a similar question (with screenshots):
https://stackoverflow.com/a/22586314/15809

NSOutlineView badges in NSSplitView

I have an NSOutlineView which I draw badge numbers to the right side of cells using drawAtPoint:, NSAttributedString, and of course NSBezierPath. My problem exists when resizing of the outline view occurs when within a subview of an NSSplitView. The badges move along with the resize to the left or right. When they get to the text of the cells themselves they do not stop or truncate the text under them. It just flies right over.
Is there a way to have the cell recognize the custom drawn view next to it and truncate text accordingly? I have tried the solution PXSourceList already, but that did not help either.
"PXSourceList solution" working good. You subclass NSOutlineView and overload frameOfCellAtColumn for this particular task. At this function you need to decrease width of cellFrame, returned from super call, by the width of your badge plus padding.

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