I created a button, and a have a little problem: When the my app launches, the button is selected. How do I disable this selection?
Example:
Caveat: This answer is incomplete: It just hides the focus ring (without preventing the selection). There's little benefit in this solution.
Set your button's focus ring type to none:
[myButton setFocusRingType:NSFocusRingTypeNone];
You can also set this option in the XIB.
First, you should know that, by default, buttons can't get focus. A user would have to have selected System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Full Keyboard Access: All Controls. If they've done that, they may want a button to initially have focus.
Anyway, the proper way to do this is to call [theWindow makeFirstResponder:nil] sometime after showing it the first time. When to do this depends on exactly how the window gets shown. If you show it explicitly in code, then you can make the call just after that. If it's shown because its Visible at Launch flag is set in its NIB, then you'd do it after the NIB is loaded. Etc.
Something should always be first responder in a window, if anything can be. Normally, only a few controls like text fields can become first responder, but when a user has Full Keyboard Access enabled, it's normal for a button to be selected by default.
If you don't want this particular button to start selected, set the window's initialFirstResponder to another control.
I'd advise against using -[NSWindow makeFirstResponder:nil]. The window will start with nothing selected, but the button will become selected as soon as the user hits tab. This is unusual for Mac apps because there's no way to get the window back into the "nothing selected" state as a user.
Related
I have an NSToolbar with NSToolbarItem instances. One of the toolbar buttons is in one of two modes, depending on whether it currently operating (has been clicked) or not. I am handling this in code by changing the icon for the button to have a background rectangle when the command it represents is operational, but I can't help thinking there must be another way.
I've tried using the Selectable checkbox in XCode Interface Builder attribute inspector, and it sort of gives the result I want, except when it is selected I can't click any of the other toolbar items. I also can't see how to deselect it.
I'm a bit of a Cocoa noob so I expect the two state toggle thing is just waiting for me to find it, except so far I haven't been able to.
This seems like it would be a common thing to want to do, thing is how?
I have an NIB-based NSPanel, style Utility Panel, that I'm making a child window of my NSDocument window. I'd like it to behave like a drawer, in that it appears like part of the window, with controls drawn in their active-window state whenever the document window is main. I'm also planning on customizing the frame, close & minimize buttons.
The panel has becomesKeyOnlyIfNeeded & excludedFromWindowsMenu set to YES, and its subclassed to return YES from canBecomeKeyWindow.
The panel's NIB contains a NSSegmentedControl and a view into which I add a view from another NIB. I'm finding that the segmented control is being drawn in its window-inactive state unless the panel is clicked on to become key.
I tried a trick from OmniGroup's OIInspectorWindow & cocoadev.com's NSWindow page, implementing an _hasActiveControls method that returns YES, but that seemed to have no effect. I then tried then overriding isMainWindow to return YES whenever the parent window is the main window (plus observing the window's state change notification & calling -display). I was hoping that this would fool the control & window frame to draw in the active state. On 10.7 (Lion) it turns out that the control does indeed draw active as I wanted, though the window frame isn't. On 10.8 (Mountian Lion), not even that, the segmented control is still inactive when the window isn't key.
I can live with my trick not affecting the window frame & close button, since I plan on customizing those anyway. Does anyone know either a) why my trick doesn't work on 10.8 and how I can get it to work, or b) another way to ensure my panel's control is always active when its parent window is main.
I have a need to spawn a window that will hover just above my main window in a cocoa application. I want this main window to allow the user to enter some text in an input box. All is well until the text input box actually gains focus. The main window becomes "deactivated." This window is borderless and is a slightly custom shape -- its more like a hover card than anything else, I suppose.
Basically, I'd like this thing to work almost exactly like Spotlight (Apple + Space) -- you can enter text, but this is such an an ancillary operation that in the context of the greater UX, you don't want the jarring effect of the main window graying out (becoming inactive). You'll notice when you have some application open and in-focus, spotlight will not cause the window of that application to become inactive.
This problem arises because text input seems to REQUIRE that the child window become the key window (it will not let you place the cursor in the text input field). When it becomes key, the main window becomes inactive.
So far I've tried:
Subclassing NSWindow for my main application and overriding isKeyWindow such that it only loses key when the application is no longer the users focus (as opposed to the window). This had the unintended effect of colliding with key status of the child window and having very strange effects on the keyboard input (some keys are not captured, like delete)
Creating a view instead of a window. Doesn't work because of this problem -- you cannot draw over a Webkit WebView these days.
Anybody Cocoa/OSX wizards have any ideas? I've become a little obsessed with this one. An itch I can't scratch.
Edit: have also tried overriding the following on the child window. When clicked, the window makes the main application window become inactive.
- (BOOL)canBecomeKeyWindow {
return YES;
}
- (BOOL)canBecomeMainWindow {
return NO;
}
Edit 2:
After screwing about with NSMenu for a while, I scrapped that approach. It seems I found something, however. In NSPanel there is a window style mask called:
NSNonactivatingPanelMask
The panel can receive keyboard input without activating the owning application.
Valid only for an instance of NSPanel or its subclasses; not valid for a window.
Trying this out now...
Edit 3: NSNonactivatingPanelMask did not do the trick. No ideas.
What you want is a window that can become the key window but which cannot become the main window. You could implement such a class yourself, but this is basically what NSPanel is for, so you might try that first.
I think this can help you:
[self.childWindow makeKeyAndOrderFront:self];
I am making an image picker that will display an n by n grid of selectable button when the picker is popped up. This grid of buttons will be contained within an NSWindow but I would like for the window to be close automatically if the user clicks off the screen. Is there a flag that can be set so that when the window looses focus it will be closed automatically?
There are two notifications that you may be interested in: NSWindowDidResignKeyNotification and NSWindowDidResignMainNotification. You can simply register for the one you're interested in in awakeFromNib (or windowDidLoad if you have a custom controller) and then close or hide the window as appropriate when you receive the notifications.
I won't delve too much into whether or not this is a good idea from UI standpoint. But, it might be a better idea to have either an overlay view or a panel for the functionality you describe.
You might check out NSPanel. It's an NSWindow subclass that will hide itself when the app is in the background, and that behavior sounds very similar to what you are looking for.
This seems awfully basic but here goes. If you are keyboard-oriented you get used to using Command-W to close windows all the time in OS X. I'd like to add that capability to the dialogs I am creating in Interface Builder for my program. I can see how to add a keyboard equivalent to a button action but what if I don't have a button?
Should I add an invisible button and put the shortcut on that? Seems clunky. Surely there is just some method I can override but what I've tried so far isn't working.
When you press Command + W, it's the exact same as choosing File -> Close from the menu bar. What Close does is send a performClose: message to the first responder. That, in turn, will check if the receiver or if the receiver's delegate implements windowShouldClose:, and the window will close if it returns YES (otherwise, it will call the close method).
So really, it depends on what type of dialog you've got here. If it's non-modal (essentially, if you can access the menu bar while it's running) and is an instance or subclass of NSWindow, then all you need to do is override the windowShouldClose: method in your dialog's delegate (or your dialog class, if you subclassed NSWindow or something) and make it return YES.
However, if the dialog is a modal dialog (you can't access the menu bar, switch windows, etc. while the dialog is running), then you can't do it this way. You could add an invisible button, but in all honesty, a modal dialog should not be closed by hitting Command-W, for that most certainly violates some Apple interface guideline out there. (Especially since, as Ande noted, it's standard practice to have Esc close/cancel a dialog.)
Adding an invisible button works just fine.
Is the dialog an NSWindow? Because by default the File->Close menu option is set to the performClose: action of the first responder, and already wired to command-w
If the dialog isn't a window simply make your dialog first responder and implement the performClose: action.
why don't you try this:
-(void)keyDown:(NSEvent *)theEvent{
//If the key is X or x it just closes the window
if ([theEvent.characters.uppercaseString isEqualToString:#"X"]) {
[self.window performClose:self];
}
}
or if you want to show a window you can instanciate and show it there instead of the performClose
Jasper was right about the code part. For interface builder(storyboard), there is a quick fix:
In your storyboard, hit "CMD+Shift+L" to bring up the components lib, select File Menu Item.
Add the file menu item to the Application Scene's Main Menu Node. (Remove unwanted file menus)
Now you have a keyboard shortcut to close a window.