I want to know how can I create custom widgets/controls in Cocoa.
Not a full tutorial, but some guidance on what to start looking into. I'm confused by custom views, Core Animation, etc. I feel lost.
I see a lot of cool looking controls, like in Reeder App, or Sparrow etc. For example:
The left side is a collapsable menu that includes animations etc. How can I achieve something similar? I thought of using a WebView + HTML + JavaScript, but that doesn't seem like a very optimized solution.
Controls are views, so if custom views confuse you, you'll need to get that figured out before moving on to custom controls. Although you should really read the entire View Programming Guide, the section called Creating a Custom View will get you started on creating your own views. Try creating a simple view that draws a circle, for example, or the time.
When you've got views figured out, move on to custom controls. Most controls work about the same way. The user touches them, and the control responds by: a) tracking the user's input, b) changing its value, c) sending its action message to its target, and d) giving the user some feedback by redrawing itself. To get started, first make sure that you know how to use controls. Reading Control and Cell Programming Topics should help, and the section titled Subclassing NSControl covers (obviously) creating your own subclasses.
The example you provided is pretty clearly Apple's Mail.app. The view on the left side of the window might be an instance of NSOutlineView, or it might be a custom class. Either way, NSOutlineView would be a good starting point if you want to duplicate that functionality. NSOutlineView is a subclass of NSTableView, which in turn is a subclass of NSControl, which in turn is a subclass of NSView. Read Outline View Programming Topics for help getting started -- tables and outlines are extremely useful, but also more complicated to use than basic controls like buttons and text fields.
I know it's only a part of the UI, but I've recently coded something similar to the sidebar. If you look though the source-code it may give you some help on learning how to use custom controls and cells.
You can check it out on Github:
https://github.com/iluuu1994/ITSidebar
Related
I have just recently began learning Swift and Xcode and I have just started programming my first app. At the moment I am using .hidden to hide and show UI elements when the user taps on different functions to switch between different scenes. This seems very messy and unnecessary so I've been trying to figure out a better way to do it. I was experimenting with different things and discovered segues but I am not sure how I would switch to a new scene within a tab without losing the tab bar at the bottom?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I thought I would answer my own question now that I have been programming in Swift for a few months now and the answer is obvious...
Rather than hiding and unhiding individual objects, just drag a UIView into the view controller and you can add objects to that. You then simply need to hide the view, to which all of the objects are attached.
I’ve been reading through several books on Mac development, but cannot find the information I’m looking for.
The books all describe how to make floating windows or panes, but never mention how to make them all in one window. A simplified example of what I’m looking to create is shown below:
Basically, there will be three windows; A selector window with radio buttons to choose which NSDocument is currently being used, a window underneath that with buttons that show different windows to the right that allow viewing and manipulation of certain data.
For a example, each NSDocument may have a color value that can be set in the window shown by clicking view A, and some text strings that can be set in the window shown by clicking view B.
So the questions are:
Is it appropriate to use a single NSDocument sub-class for each Doc #1 and Doc #2?
Which classes should I use to set up the application as shown? NSWindowController? NSWindow? NSPanel?
I’m only looking for guidance on what to read up on, so any pointers are appreciated.
EDIT:
To clarify this further, I want to have a table view where the buttons are (View A & B), and by clicking them they will cause the other window/view to change it's contents.
It's like the split view in the iPad settings application, there is a table view on the left, and when it's pressed the right side changes.
The radio buttons are there only to illustrate that I want more than one Document. I'm guessing I need more than one to handle this? Or perhaps I should place them all in a single NSDocument? Somehow that doesn't seem right.
To achieve what you want you need one window (NSWindow), one window controller and various views each with their own view controller. There are several ways you could set this up, all depending on your requirements:
You'd have at least 3 views (instances of NSView): one for the selection of the document class, one for the view selection and one for the content. Each view is controlled by a view controller (instance of NSViewController). Additionally you can opt to wrap the views in split views (NSSplitView) so your user can resize the real estate available to each view.
You have one window with a window controller. If you choose a Document based app template in Xcode, Xcode will generate a subclass of NSDocument which you can use as your window controller (or choose to use Core Data and Xcode will generate a subclass of NSPersistentDocument with all bells and whistles you need to access Core Data for document persistency).
So to come back to your questions:
1: Yes, but depending on your requirements. If Doc #1 is a completely different thing than Doc #2 than you might need to re-evaluate. For example Doc #1 might have completely different persistent requirements than #2.
2: There's no single scenario here, but one that worked for me: Take the project template for a document based app (with or without Core Data). Use the generated subclass of NSDocument (or NSPersistentDocument) as your window controller. Use NSView to implement the views in your window where each view is managed by its own controller, which is an instance of NSViewController.
I know this is an old question, but a way to do it how you want would be to use: ContainerViews and set their embed segue to be the view controllers you want.
I currently have to develop a system very similar to MIT's Scratch's UI. In case you don't know it, here a screenshot: http://kidconfidence.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/scratch1.png
Basically you have bricks in the library on the left you can drop into the window on the right side. The problem I have is that I'm new to Cocoa and not sure what would be the best way to accomplish that.
Because you can nest these bricks sometimes and other times stick them together I wonder if there is something that would help implementing that. I recognize this is not a very common interface that there are probably no implementations of that around, but maybe there are helpers for parts of this.
Regards,
Armin
Edit: switching to desktop
There are no standard cocoa controls that you could leverage for the building blocks. You will probably want to subclass NSControl to make your standard brick object.
The list on the left could be an NSTableView. The main work area can be an NSScrollView.
You probably want to use your own brick hierarchy independent of the view hierarchy because of the freeform dragging.
I want to build a Cocoa App with a list of entries very similar to the ToDo list of Things.app (see the screencast). The question is whether I should use
a TableView,
a CollectionView or
a WebView.
I think it could work with all of them, but which one suits the following requirements best?
have a list of entries -> 1 column & many rows
reordering with drag & drop
select single entries & use keys for actions like delete
open up an entry: the row should expand to show more input fields
customized look: rounded corners, shadow, background gradient
So far my research says that the TableView has most of the functionality, but is harder to customize in its appearance, the CollectionView doesn't have drag & drop (right?) but is easy to design and the WebView would take much effort to not hurt the user experience and I can't bind my model directly to input fields.
What pros and cons am I missing and what would you recommend to use?
A WebView doesn't make sense. You might as well create a web application if you use a WebView. An NSCollectionView is more for grid like data, like TV listings per hour.
NSTableView is the only one that makes sense in this case. I've implemented all 5 bullet points with with an NSTableView without issue. You need to extend NSTableView and do some custom drawing for the customized look. That's the hardest part.
open up an entry: the row should expand to show more input fields
You need an outline view. A table view is for flat lists.
Note that NSOutlineView is a subclass of NSTableView, so all the table-view features work on an outline view as well.
There are people who've done this already. One that I've used successfully is by Matteo Bertozzi and is available here: http://th30z.netsons.org/2009/03/cocoa-sidebar-with-badges-take-2/ It might take a bit of massaging to get it to work properly (especially if you need complex drag-and-drop behavior), but for basic functionality, such as getting the section titles and items in the list, it works excellently.
Edit: This has come up before and is a common question on the cocoa-dev email list. Here are some other options.
Just took a look at Things.app itself using "F-script anywhere".
They've used a subclass of NSTableView called "DetailTableView" which presents the condensed todo items. Collapsed todo items are implemented using a custom cell called "ToDoCell", but the expanded look you get when editing is interesting. In that case they've got a custom view called "ToDoEditView" which is inserted as a subview of the DetailTableView when required. I suspect this editing view is temporarily added as a subview in the correct location and the corresponding row of the tableview gets resized temporarily while it is present.
All pretty speculative .. I'd love to know the details of how this was done. It's an awesome UI.
I'm approaching the very same problem in my app (with one big list similar to the Things todo list) and I think a table view would make a lot of sense here.
The trick is having your cells ("rows") expand when double-clicked. That's about all the progress I've made so far.
As I wire up my first fairly complicated Cocoa-Touch view I feel like I'm inadvertently slipping back into old procedural patterns and finding it difficult to shake them off...Though fully aware of many of the Cocoa (OO) design patterns I'm afraid I may be subverting them.
As such this view in question is quickly becoming unmanageable and I'm wondering if I might be approaching it the wrong way?!? The view is managed by a subclass of UIViewController. The view itself contains ±10 subviews. Some of these subviews "slide" in and out and contain their own subviews (controls, imageviews, etc) that slide along with them.
Without getting into too much detail I've found that I'm executing most (if not all, including animation) of my management code w/in the touchesBegan/Moved/Ended methods of my root View Controller. And it's become a mess of managing, setting & checking boolean properties. if (editingMode & panelAVisible).... if (editingMode & panelBVisible)... or *if (viewFlipped) { for (MyCustomView view in someArrayOfSubviews)} etc, etc... granted the UI of this app requires most of these views (or their contents) to be touched and moved by the user to different parts of the screen.
The main problems I'm trying to solve seems to be along the lines of: if viewA is present then you 3 views go hide (animated)...or, If viewB is touched then all objects contained in viewC are negative... etc.
Any clever (or rudimentary) OO approach to handling this? Perhaps make the subviews that contain views act as their own mini view controllers? I haven't been able to find too many (any?) examples of that though...
As you suggested at the end of your question, I would recommend having a subcontroller whenever you need logic for a particular subview. The point of a controller object is to keep track of state of the view and to encapsulate all that view logic that you were describing. Interface actions, such as if the user can move to a different screen, can invoke save logic, can create a new document, should be in the controller for that particular view. This will help maintain a separation of concerns between the various controllers and cut your convoluted logic down at the top level.
While it doesn't pertain to iPhone programming specifically, the book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X contains good examples (especially in the chapter about how to do preference windows) of using subcontrollers and subviews in your application.
I think you should go along your last suggestion, make the subviews that contain views act as their own mini view controllers. Each (sub)view that presents a 'screen full of content' could/should be managed by its own view controller.
Animating between those views can be done with the build in navigation controller (you can actually hide the top bar of a navigation controller) such that you have the default slide animation. Otherwise you could indeed create your own animation while still using that navigation controller.
'The view itself contains ±10 subviews'. Some of these subviews "slide" in and out [..]'. These subviews you're talking about are perfect candidates for extraction from your one monolithic UIView.
The basic OO principle to use is how the navigation controller does it, by pushing and popping views on and off a stack. Each view pushed and popped is handled by its own view controller.
HTH
Edit: I now see you're not specifically talking about iPhone development. Still, have a look how its done there (especially the UINavigationController). You can still get the basic design idea