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.
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:
How do you change the width of a button in a tool bar on Mac? I can change the width in interface builder but it only updates if the width is larger than the current size. If I try to make it smaller it doesn't change in tool bar.
Not sure if you found an answer yet, but I was recently looking to do this as well for a popup button. The answer is to create the button outside the toolbar first. Then once you create it you can drag it onto the toolbar area and it will be added as a toolbar item.
For example, I created a popup button on my main window and set it to the width that I wanted. Then I opened the toolbar section and dragged that button onto it... and it worked.
Good luck.
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'm trying to make my first Cocoa app (previously I was making iOS apps) and what I wish to do for my custom view is make it's title clickable with indicator (accessory) triangle facing down.
Clicking the title would open a popup/menu with my items.
How is that doneable in Cocoa?
Rdelmar's answer is probably the easiest way to go, but may not do exactly what you might want to do (which is replace the actual title with a pop up item, instead of having a popup button under the title in the toolbar area). With respect to functionality your application will probably work just as well using the toolbar.
If, however, you truly want to replace the actual title, the means of going about this would be to set the NSWindow title text to #"" to hide it, and redraw it by sticking in your own view.
[[[theWindow contentView] superview] addSubview:theSubview];
This basically tells the superview of the main content view to add another subview (direct "translation" from the code), and you'll have to tinker with the frame of this new subview to have it be positioned where the title should be positioned (as now it's free to be placed anywhere in the window frame, including on top of the title bar, as opposed to simply inside the content view).
theSubview can be your popup button, or whatever you want, and you'll also probably have to custom draw the popup button to match the original drawing of the window title.
You can do this by adding a toolbar to your window in IB. Once, you add the toolbar, you can double click on it to open the customizer view of it. Drag a popup button into the Allowable Toolbar Items area and after it is inserted there you can drag it into the bottom area which shows the layout of the toolbar -- you can also drag out any of the default items there that you don't want.
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.