I can't seem to figure out how to make my toolbar items look like buttons. Some examples of what I'm looking for are the toolbar items in Mail, Safari and Transmission. Are these buttons just simple images, or is there a setting somewhere I'm missing?
They are NSButtons or NSSegmentedControls. Just drag one right into the toolbar from the IB palette.
Related
Desired look
I wish to make a toolbar for my app that will contain some simple buttons, each with a single monochromatic icon. Here is an example of some toolbar buttons similar to I'm trying to achieve, from Mail's compose window:
Notice these buttons have a consistent size, inner padding, padding, and shading. This is a pretty consistent style across macOS, present in Mail, Safari, Finder, etc. This leads me to suspect there's a standardized UI component for creating such buttons.
If I use a segmented control, each button looks correct, with each icon being correctly padded:
Now I would like to add individual buttons that match the style.
Attempt 1
My first attempt was to add a "Push Button" (NSButton) to the toolbar:
This resulted in a wide button that's a bit too short, and not lined up with the segmented control:
Attempt 2
My second attempt was to use a segmented control, with only 1 segment.
This resulted in a button that's the right shape, size, etc., but it was off center relative to its label.
Naturally, I can manually adjust the button to match the goal, but I feel like I'm missing something. What's the proper way to create these standard buttons?
This is actually quite easy to do and you were close already.
You can use NSButton for that. Note that it has different styles (defined in NSButton.BezelStyle) to choose from. The default one is the one to use inside windows and modals. But for toolbars, to match the style of segmented controls and search bars, you can choose the style .texturedRounded.
You can also set the style via Interface Builder. Note that you have to select the button itself, not the toolbar item around it.
To get the correct size, you seem to set the icon within the toolbar item, not the button itself.
Here is my result:
Some of the color selection buttons in the Xcode details panels are a NSPopupButton with a color well. It looks something like a segmented control/popup button.
Placing a standard color well and standard popup button next to each other doesn't have the same look. Also, the menu wouldn't cover the color well in this case. The popup image (two triangles) is not readily available for a custom control either.
Anyone tried to make a similar control before? Any hints on how to make it?
I'm working on some updates to my first Mac app and I'm trying to get my window's toolbar buttons to look like the toolbar buttons on EVERY standard Mac app. However, for the life of me, I can't find a button type or a barbutton type that gets me what I'm looking for. Am I missing something?
Here is an image showing several Mac apps (Preview, Finder, and Safari) with toolbars at the top which have very-slighty rounded corner buttons which also have a slight gradient on them, etc.
However, in my .xib I've got a toolbar and I've dropped every kind of button I can find on the thing and nothing looks like the standard Mac button.
The first button looks pretty close, but it's clearly not the same color. Am I missing something?
#Matt Ball is right - you can use NSSegmentedControls, even for single one-time click buttons. Just set the number of segments to 1, and set the mode to "Select None".
One of my shipping apps uses this technique, see below:
All of the controls there are NSSegmentedControl, including the single one.
Update: there are a few standard button icons which are meant for toolbars. The NSImage Class Reference has a list.
In the above screenshot, only two of the buttons are using built-in images: NSLeftFacingTriangleTemplate, and NSRightFacingTriangleTemplate. The others I drew myself.
I have to implement a custom toolbar for my application, where a button will be placed on the side of exit, maximize and minimize buttons.
I tried to work with the toolbar element on XCode, but it always put elements below these buttons and not on the side.
App Store application implement this feature, like you can see in this image.
One solution is to start with this open source code (https://github.com/indragiek/INAppStoreWindow) to give you the correct title bar style, and then position buttons in the titlebar.
Safari on iPad has this bar at the top (it isn't called "toolbar" on iOS, right?), with some icons and input are for searching.
How to put such buttons and input field into Navigation Bar? Is it even a Navigation Bar? From what I read a Navigation Bar has one button on the left, another one on the right and one Label in the middle. But how to create something like that "top" bar from Safari?
If I'm in XCode 4.0 and choose "View-based app", should I then set in the ViewController > Simulated Metrics > Top Bar > Navigation bar? And how to add buttons to it?
Edit
Sorry for the confusion - I don't know if the proper way is to add to a Navigation Bar. I'm just asking for a general overview how such "top "bar" is made. What kind of View do such items belong under?
You probably don't want to use a navigation bar. They are very limited in what controls you can put in them. Try using a UIToolbar instead.
I think you may be looking for the UISearchBar
UISearchBar Sample Code
In the interface builder you should be able to just drag and drop objects onto the navigation bar, as for the little icons, those are just buttons with no border and images. Those images are preloaded in the iOS SDK, so you won't have to make them, but if you want your own then you can make them yourself.