Is the semi-transparant notification window which XCode 4 shows on Snow Leopard and on Lion a standard Cocoa control or is it something custom? I've seen more and more apps with similarly styled popups, and don't want to go about reinventing something if a much cleaner implementation exists in Cocoa. If this is a standard control, could someone tell me the name or point me to the documentation for it?
This is the popup window I am referring to:
This is custom but Matt Gemmell has sample code at http://mattgemmell.com/source. It's called RoundedFloatingPanel.
Related
is there any control in Mac OS like Microsoft PropertyGrid or I need to create it by hand from other simple controls?
No, there's nothing like this in AppKit.
When someone asked this question before, one of the responses mentions a framework called InspectorKit. The original link is broken, but here's a fork: https://github.com/thmghtd/InspectorKit.framework
Or you could create something yourself using components like NSForm and NSTableView.
UIKit for Cocoa Touch does implement something like this in the Settings app.
I like the new tab interface displayed in the Lion “About This Mac” window. It's not gorgeous, but I think it's extremely useful in presenting information where icons would most probably fail to do a good job.
Question is: is that UI available from standard Cocoa components? I.e., can something similar to it be built with Xcode, without resorting to custom classes with custom drawing code?
Isn't that just a toolbar without images?
In my Mac application I'd like to implement a view that simulates UITabBar from iOS.
What's the preferred way to implement this? Use NSOutlineView , NSTableView, or something else?
For a native Mac app, the equivalent of a UITabBar is an NSTabView. If you want to go for the iOS look, you either have to roll your own with some NSView subclass or take a look at UMEKit.
Chameleon may also be an option, but it currently doesn't implement UITabBar, this might change in the future.
If you want to follow a trend of making your Mac app with the UIKit look-and-feel
you might want to take a look at the Chameleon Project - note the status of the project on the developer's blog. However, the project source is on github now, and people are helping out.
How could I make an NSWindow's title bar look like that of the Mac App Store or of the app Feeder where it's height is increased and other controls are show in it.
To see what I mean just check out the website for the Mac App Store : http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/.
Is it a custom NSWindow or is it a completely borderless window with an NSView made to look like the title bar?
https://github.com/indragiek/INAppStoreWindow
Title bar and traffic light customization for NSWindow
INAppStoreWindow is an NSWindow subclass that was originally developed to mimic the appearance of the main window in the Mac App Store application introduced in OS X 10.6.6.
The MAS application has since transitioned away from this design, but INAppStoreWindow is still being actively developed to provide extensive additional customization options for NSWindow title bars...
For iTunes (v9.x) Apple used no toolbar, but custom aligned icons and controls in the top bar, to achieve a similar effect. (see link below)
The window looks like a "textured & unified title and toolbar" window to me. (or a slight variant of such)
To reposition the traffic light buttons follow my answer to this question.
However, as Dave DeLong already (similarly) commented: "The UI is terrible. Please don't even think about it."
You can also take a look at http://orestis.gr/blog/2007/09/24/messing-with-windows/ . This uses some undocumented stuff, though, so it won't actually get approved FOR the App Store.
I'm new to cocoa app dev, and I'm searching a solution to create a windows like the tweetie main windows with a left tool bar and a panel that point to the selected icon.
like this screenshot : http://i.stack.imgur.com/qvxWu.jpg
could anyone help me?
It's likely that a lot of the Tweetie UI is implemented using custom controls. You'll want to look into subclassing NSView and how to handle drawing and mouse events. There's nothing built into the Cocoa framework for this.
The NSView documentation has info on view programming, drawing, and event handling. If you're new to Cocoa, you may want to start off with something built in, though, as this will be a lot of work (and requires a pretty good understanding of how the framework works).