I want to create a system wide minimize-in-place feature that occurs when double-clicking the title bar of any visible window in layer 0.
It seems that this would be a really simple feature to re-implement... When a title-bar is double-clicked, just draw the title bar only. That's it. The problem is implimenting it in all applications. I think it requires writting a custom framework to override the behavior in AppKit? Maybe NSApplication, NSWindow or NSView?
How can I recreate minimize-in-place?
Is a framework my only choice? If I create a framework, can I replace the behavior of minimize in 3rd party apps?
Which framework do I need to override in order to intercept and recreate the default behavior of the minimize button?
More about minimize-in-place:
I am familiar with WindowShade by Unsanity, this is exactly what I want to create. Supposedly unsanity is working on a Lion version, but their track record is bismal. Minimize-in-place was a system feature way back in the days of OS 7 or 8. I have tried other utilities that try to replace this feature, and there aren't any that do minimize-in-place at a core system level like it needs to be done. Please don't offer utitlity suggestions, I am going to build my own.
I have built an Application that recreates minimize-in-place, but it's not good enough.
My Application semi-successfully recreates minimize-in-place by putting "placeholder" windows (belonging to my app) in place of the 3rd party windows when they get minimized to dock. When my window (title bar only) gets double-clicked, I close my window and restore the real window from the dock.
My custom app works perfectly, but there is a lot of application switching going on. I have optimized the switching between apps to be nearly seamless, but the fact remains that there is application switching going on every time a window title bar is double-clicked. The result of application switching is that menu bars switch back and forth, pallets of 3rd party apps hide themselves when my app takes focus, and the list goes on.
So, although I've built a concept app, this method isn't going to work as I'd like it to. Minimize-in-place needs to be implemented using some other method than building an Application, and I need help understanding how to do it.
What I know think I need to do. Suggestions and assistance welcome.
I think I need to write a custom framework that replaces AppKit? This seems overwhelming even though I only need a super-tiny portion of the code to be overridden? i.e. the core _minimize function whatever that may be.
When a title-bar of 3rd party window is double-clicked, just clip to the title bar and let the rest of the system function as normal. On un-minimize (double click 2nd time), set clip back to full window.
Simple right?
Thanks for any assistance/suggestions,
Chris
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I'm looking for a way to embed another application into my own view.
The business reason is that the company has many small Electron apps (basically a small portable web program with a self-contained browser) that the company wants to embed inside an OS X program. These Electron apps would ideally integrate and display inside a subview seamlessly, so they look like little web frames inside our larger program.
I think programatically it would be easiest to open another program as a subview, but I'll take whatever I can get. Maybe even capturing it's NSWindow somehow. (Electron source is available so it is easily discoverable.) Maybe a way to dock the other program inside mine, or (getting more desperate) finding its view and sending commands to constrain it's size and location on top of mine.
So far all I've found says it is not really possible. I've found I can take the more desperate course. I can launch a process, find its view, and position it inside a spot on my display; when the window is moved or the content is scrolled send messages to move the other window. But that isn't really integrated, the menu stays separate, etc., but I cannot incorporate it.
Any ideas or helpful implementation details?
EDIT 1: Thanks for those responses. How about if we could have the electron apps expose their NSWindow somehow? Could that be leveraged? I'm thinking the application could send messages and (somehow, not sure exactly) to set the parent window inside this one. In Windows API it is much easier since you can call SetParent on anything, even items inside different processes. But Cocoa seems more difficult.
This isn't really a thing you can do in Mac OS X. Applications are not "composable" in the way you're hoping for - while it is possible to share a view with a subprocess under certain very specific circumstances (e.g, Safari or Chrome tab renderers), this requires the subapplication to be written in a very specific way to permit that. It's not something that would be feasible in the situation you're describing.
If you have access to the source of these Electron apps, consider combining them into a single overarching Electron application. Alternatively, if it's not possible for these applications to coexist within a single Electron app, you may want to consider using something like Chromium Embedded Framework to build your wrapper application; note, however, that this may require you to implement parts of the Electron framework yourself.
You cannot do that. Cocoa requires you to have only one NSApplication instance per UI app. So you will to fork/exec out new process and launch your applications.
If you can recompile the source code then you can create custom subclass of NSApplication and use that custom class in all the applications or you can create NSthread of other applications without NSApplication instance and go from there.
I'm relatively new to Cocoa development. I'm developing on Snow Leopard. I have a scenario in mind and I'm curious if the API supports it. I've not been able to find anything about it, so I assume its not possible. But I'm happy to be proved wrong.
Suppose I write an application that lives at the top of the screen just below the menu bar. The window floats, so it is always on top. This can be annoying, so one thing I had in mind was constraining other windows (especially those in other applications) so that they are below my application. Is there something in the API that would allow me to do that? To specify a maximum origin for all windows (except mine)?
Thanks.
There's no real supported way to do this. You could achieve something similar using the Accessibility API. You'd have to watch for window-moved notifications and shove the window back into the visibile area.
I don't think you can do that, you see, one of the cool things of a window's based UI is that you can stack Windows on top of others, in a desktop metafore.
Now, what you can do is a always on top window, using NSScreenSaverWindowLevel as the NSWindow level. One nice trick you can do is [window setLevel: NSScreenSaverWindowLevel+1], and it set's your window above the screensaver level.
I've learnt Cocoa + Objective C primarily for iPhone development, and I need to utilize this skill set to build a very basic kiosk application for OS X in a couple of days. The application is basically as follows :
The setup has two touch screen monitors, the app must be running full screen mode. The monitor on the right acts as a detail view to a list of options on the left. There are 3 options on the monitor on the left. Picking one will play a movie on the right, Picking two will take you to a quiz, Picking 3 will pull up a Webview.
The user may not use any other operations on the PC. (I've started reading about OS X application development and realized Cocoa provides a kiosk mode for these types of apps)
My questions briefly are
Firstly, any help on how to get my app running in a kiosk mode is much appreciated! I'm under a bit of a time crunch (2 days to get all this done, talk about life in startups!), so completely static content is fine, I'm slightly worried about how OS X will handle full screen mode if an app has been written in a smaller window size. (Scaling etc.)
Next, assuming there are two windows, one on each screen, how do I deal with focus? If the user suddenly gets bored with content on the right and touches the window on the left, the first touch will probably act to focus the window and the second will act as a click on the button. I'd like to avoid this scenario!)
What are the navigation paradigms in OS X ? I'm guessing it's not as simple as [navigationController pushViewController]? In short, how do I display a new view over an existing view?
Thanks,
Teja
Firstly, any help on how to get my app running in a kiosk mode is much appreciated!
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/KioskMode/
Next, assuming there are two windows, one on each screen, how do I deal with focus? If the user suddenly gets bored with content on the right and touches the window on the left, the first touch will probably act to focus the window and the second will act as a click on the button. I'd like to avoid this scenario!)
Click-through is the default. If you have any custom views, respond to acceptsFirstMouse: with YES to support click-through in them.
What are the navigation paradigms in OS X ?
Typically either window-based or source-list-based. Your application is atypical.
I'm guessing it's not as simple as [navigationController pushViewController]?
It's simpler and more complex at the same time. There is no stack to manage; you can have multiple windows up at the same time. It gets more complex when you want everything in one window (as in your kiosk-mode app), in which case you end up using tab views (with or without tabs) to enable the user to switch from one view to another.
In short, how do I display a new view over an existing view?
You don't. Layering one view over another in the same superview is barely supported at all in AppKit, and almost always wrong.
In a normal application, you should make multiple windows. In an app like yours, you'll need to use tab views. View controllers may help you here, although NSViewControllers are very different from UIViewControllers (as I mentioned, no view stack); they're more similar to NSWindowControllers.
I'm from a Windows programming background when writing tools, but have been programming using Carbon and Cocoa for the past year. I have introduced myself to Mac by, I admit it, hiding from UI programming. I've been basically wapping my OpenGL code in a view, then staying in my comfort zone using my platform agnostic OpenGL C++ code as usual.
However, now I want to start porting one of my more sophisticated applications to Mac OS.
Typically I use the standard Visual Studio dockable MDI approach, which is excellent, but very Windows-like. From using a Mac primarily now for a while, I don't tend to see this sort of method used for Mac UIs. Even Xcode doesn't support the idea of drag and drop/dockable views, unfortunately. I see docked views with splitter panels, but that's about it.
The closest thing I've seen to the Visual Studio approach is Photoshop CS4, which is pretty nice.
So what is the general consensus on this? Is there are more Mac-like way of achieving the same thing that I haven't seen? If not, I'm happy to write a window manager in Cocoa myself, so that I can finally delve in an learn what looks like an excellent API.
Note, I don't want to use QT or any other cross-platform libraries. The whole point is that I want to make a Mac app look like a Mac app, leave the Windows app looking like a Windows app. I always find the cross-platform libraries tend to lose this effect, and when I see a native Mac UI, with fancy Cocoa transitions and animations, I always smile. It's also a good excuse for me to learn Cocoa.
That being said, if there is an Open Source Cocoa library to do this, I'd love to know about it! I'd love to see how someone else achieves this, and would help smooth the Cocoa learning curve.
Cheers,
Shane
UPDATE: I forgot to mention a critical point. I support plugins, which can have their own UI to display various plugin specific information. I don't know which plugins will be loaded and I don't know where their UI will live, if I don't support docking. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this, specifically: How do I support a plugin view architecture, if the UI can't change? Where do I put the plugin views?
Coming from a Windows background, you feel the need to have docking windows, but is it really essential to the app? Apple's philosophy (in my opinion) is that the designer knows better than the user how things should look and work. For example, iTunes is a pretty sophisticated app, but it doesn't let you change the UI around, change the skin, etc., because Apple wants to keep it consistent. They offer the full view, the mini player, and a handful of different viewing options, but they don't let you pull the source list off into a separate window, or dock it in other positions. They think it should be on the left, so there it stays...
You said you "want to make a Mac app look like a Mac app", and as you pointed out, Mac apps don't tend to have docking windows. Therefore, implementing your own docking windows is probably a step in the wrong direction ;)
+1 to Ken's answer.
From a user perspective unless its integral to the app like it is in Adobe CS or Eclipse i want everything as concise as possible and all the different options and displays out of my way so i can focus on the document.
I think you will find with mac users that those who have the "user skill" to make use of rearranging panels will in most cases opt for hot key bindings instead, and those who dont have that level of "skill" youre just going to confuse.
I would recommend keeping it as simple as possible.
One thing that's common among many Mac apps is the ability to hide all the chrome and focus on your content. That's the point behind the "tic tac" toolbar control in the top right corner of many windows. A serious weakness of many docking UIs is that they expect you to have the window take up most of the screen, because the docked panels can obscure content. Even if docked panels are collapsable, the space left by them is often just wasted and filled with white space. So, if you build a docking panel into your interface, you should expect it to be visible most of the time. For example, iTunes' source list is clearly designed to be visible all the time, but you can double-click a playlist to open it in a new window.
To get used to the range of Mac controls, I'd suggest you try doing some serious work with some apps that don't have a cross-platform UI; for example, the iWork apps, Interface Builder or Preview. Take note of where controls appear and why—in toolbars, in bottom bars, in inspectors, in source lists/sidebars, in panels such as IB's Library or the Font and Color panels, in contextual HUDs. Don't forget the menu bar either. Get an idea of the feel of controls—their responsiveness, modality, sizing, grouping and consistency. Try to develop some taste—not everything is perfect; just try iCal if you want to have something to make fun of.
Note that there's no "one size fits all" for controls, which can be an issue with docking UIs. It's important to think about workflow: how commonly used the control would be, whether you can replace it with direct manipulation, whether a visible indication of its state is necessary, whether it's operable from the keyboard and mouse where appropriate, and so forth. Figure out how the control's placement and behavior lets the user work more efficiently.
As a simple example of example of a good versus bad control placement and behavior in otherwise-decent applications, compare image masking in OmniGraffle and Keynote. In OmniGraffle, this uses the Image inspector where you have to first click on an unlabeled button ("Natural size") in order to enable the appropriate controls, then adjust size and position away in a low-fidelity fashion with an image thumbnail or by typing percentages into fields. Trying to resize the frame directly behaves in a bizarre and counterintuitive fashion.
In Keynote, masking starts with a sensibly named menu item or toolbar item, uses a HUD which pops up the instant you click on a masked image and allows for direct manipulation including a sensible display of the extent of the image you're masking. While you're dragging a masked image around, it even follows the guides. Advanced users can ignore the HUD entirely, just double-clicking the image to toggle mask editing and using the handles for sizing. It should be easy to see, with a few caveats (e.g. the state of "Edit Mask" mode should be visible in the HUD rather than just from the image; the outer border of the image you're masking should be more effectively used) Keynote is substantially better at this, in part because it doesn't use an inspector.
That said, if you do have a huge number of options and the standard tabbed inspector layout doesn't work for you, check out the Omni Group's OmniInspector framework. Try to use it for good, and hopefully you'll figure out how to obsess over UI as much as you do over graphics now :-)
(running in slow motion, reaching out in panic) Nnnnnoooooooo!!!!!
:-) Seriously, as I mentioned in reply to Ken's excellent answer, trying to force a "Windowsism" on an OS X UI is definitely a bad idea. In my opinion, the biggest problem with Windows UI is third-party developers inventing new and inconsistent ways of presenting UI, rather than being consistent and following established conventions. To a Mac user, that's the sign of a terrible application. It's that way for a reason.
I encourage you to rethink your UI app's implementation from the ground up with the Mac OS in mind. If you've done your job well, the architecture and model (sans platform-specific implementation) should clearly translate to any platform.
In terms of UI, you've been using a Mac for a year, so you should have a pretty good idea of "the norm". If you have doubts, it's best to post a question specifically detailing what you need to present and your thoughts on how you might do it (or asking how if you have no idea).
Just don't whack your app with the ugly stick by forcing it to behave as if it were running in Windows when it's clearly not. That's the kiss of death for an app to Mac users.
I would like to extend some existing applications' drag and drop behavior, and I'm wondering if there is any way to hack on drag and drop support or changes to drag and drop behavior by monitoring the app's message loop and injecting my own messages.
It would also work to monitor for when a paste operation is executed, basically to create a custom behavior when a control only supports pasting text and an image is pasted.
I'm thinking Detours might be my best bet, but one problem is that I would have to write custom code for each app I wanted to extend. If only Windows was designed with extensibility in mind!
On another note, is there any OS that supports extensibility of this nature?
If you're willing to do in-memory diddling while the application is loaded, you could probably finagle that.
But if you're looking for an easy way to just inject code you want into another window's message pump, you're not going to find it. The skills required to accomplish something like this are formidable (unless someone has wrapped all of this up in an application/library that I'm unaware of, but I doubt it). It's like clipboard hooking, writ-large: it's frowned upon, there are tons of gotchas, and you're extremely likely to introduce significant instability into your system if you don't really know what you're doing.
Well, think of this from the point of view of the app designer. If you wrote an application, do you want users to be able to inject things into your application (more importantly, would you want to incur the support/revenue headache of clueless users doing this and then blaming you)? Each application's drag and drop infrastructure is written specifically for the application, not to allow you to drop anything you want onto it (potentially causing crashes and all sorts of other nasty behaviour when you drag something onto an app that simply can't handle it). Stuff like this is hard to do for a reason.
It is possible to do, but it's a lot of work: you need to acquire the window handle of the thing you want to drop something onto, and then replace that window's message handler with your own. That's fraught with danger, of course, since you either have to replicate all of the existing functionality of that window yourself, or risk the app not working correctly.
Hm thats really too bad. I suppose there are sometimes reasons why apps don't exist yet. Basically what I'm trying to do is simplify the process of sending image links to people using various apps (mainly web browser text forms, but also anytime I'm editing in a terminal window) by hooking the process of pasting an image in a text context, uploading the image in the background, and pasting a url to where the image was uploaded all with a single action.
Edit: I suppose the easier solution to this is to just create a new keyboard combo that is hooked by my app before it gets to any other app. There's no reason in particular that I need to tie it to copy/paste functionality.