I want to build a custom control that would work like this:
You have a kind of NSButton with an image.
You click the button and than appears a big square with a grid of photos.
You click one of the photos and it is set up as new image for the button. (square dissapears)
Now, how to draw this big square with photos if I want it not to be limited to window frame?
I mean, if the button was close to window border the square is going to be partially outside window. I would also like to add some shadow to the square and an animation for opening/closing.
One important thing: I want to be able to draw not only a square but any other simple shape (circle)!
This isn't really a drawing question so much as a general custom views question. It's important to make that distinction.
I'll describe this in terms of rectangles to give you the general idea*. You should make sure you understand the view hierarchy and view geometry in Cocoa. Without this important requisite knowledge, you'll remain dead in the water.
It's easy to set an NSButton's image, so I'll leave that to you. Your button's action, however, would tell some controller to show the "image picker" for the given button. Your image picker would be some type of borderless window with an image list inside. The image picker could be an IKImageBrowserView (you'll have to enable Image Kit in Interface Builder for this control to appear), which gives you an iPhoto-like grid of images (with/without titles, different border types, etc.).
An explanation of the operation of this controller and how it creates the window, manages the selection, and sets the button's image is very broad so if you get hung up on any of those steps, you'll need to create a separate question for each problem, otherwise this answer would have to be an instruction manual for writing your app for you.
* Your problem is a little more difficult because of your desire to have differently-shaped "popup windows" ... you'd have to make sure your available photos fit neatly within the shape so none of them are cut off. Armed with the basic knowledge of view geometry, I'll leave this to you as an exercise. A hint: you can use a borderless, transparent window to host a view that draws itself in any shape you please.
Related
In MacOS there is a simple App called Calculator, that I would like to recreate using Swift for learning purposes. A button like the plus button on the calculator has two images associated with it, one when the button is up and one when the button is down, as seen on the images below.
As you can see, when the + button is pressed down, its image changes to a darker orange color and the text gets a dark grey color. My question is: How to implement this button behavior?
Is it possible to do it with NSButton (and if so how)? or is it easier to implement it using CALayer? Or maybe there is some other way that I have not thought of?
You should be able to use a single image and configure it in code or in your asset catalogue to be a "template image". That means the shape is taken into consideration, much like a stamp, and the stamped-out area is filled with color dynamically. That means you don't have to provide a white and dark gray/black variant. One variant will suffice, usually black to see the lines well, and the rest can be configured through.
See the SO question "How to NOT highlight the NSButton's template image when clicked?" for details about the setup: How to NOT highlight the NSButton's template image when clicked?
I have just upgraded Unity to version 4.6 and tried to create a button by Create -> UI -> Button.
However, this button doesn't show up in #Screen tab but it does in Game tab.
Please look at the screen shoot below:
Another question is: The default width and height when creating a new button is 160 x 30. When I change the source image with my own image button, I have to change the width and height parameters in rect transform. Is there any faster way to automatically obtain new width and height based on the image which I insert?
Thank you very much!
First, double click the button in your hierarchy and see that it indeed does not show in the Scene view, excluding any kind of zoom problem. (By the way, I'm assuming you mean "Scene" and not "Screen", right?) Things in different cameras or canvases might have very different scales but appear correctly in the Game view. I don't know how used you are to Unity, so I'm sorry if this sounds obvious. :)
Next, check the dropdown labeled "Layers" on top of Unity's editor, to the right of the Play, Pause and Step buttons. See if the layer of your button (which in this case is "UI") is visible. It should have an open eye icon next to it.
Regarding your other question, after dragging your sprite to the Image component, you can press the "Set Native Size" button, which will set the size of your object to the dimensions of your Sprite. Regarding the new UI, I think this is as automatic as it gets. Note that "Set Native Size" will only appear if your Image type is set to Simple (probably what you want) or Filled in the component.
I had the same problem before and here's a possible solution.
By default, the editor camera (Scene Tab) renders the World Space,
so your Canvas component's render mode should be set to "World Space".
The problem may only occur when you're trying to (or supposedly) render your UI in Screen Space - Overlay or Screen Space - Camera in the Canvas component.
So if you want to properly edit UI objects in the scene tab/window; set the Canvas component's render mode to World Space.
We don't have this problem in Unity 4.x before because I think Unity automatically renders any render mode from the Canvas component, however, that doesn't happen in Unity 5.x. I'm guessing it's either intentional that they do that or it's a bug on Unity UI feature.
The new Unity 4.6 comes with a new GUI, when I change de resolution on Unity the UI Button scales perfectly but when I test on the Nexus 7 device the Button looks too small. Any idea how to solve this?
Unity's new GUI system uses "anchors" to control how gui elements (like buttons) scale in relation to their parent container.
Unity has a tutorial video on how to use the new "Rect Transform" component (where the anchors are configured) here: http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/ui/rect-transform.
The last half of the tutorial is all about anchors. That page has links to the entire tutorial series. It's not too long. You should watch the whole thing.
Specific to your question:
The anchors are visible in your first screen shot. They are those 4 little arrows at the top left of your button.
Right now, your button is only anchored by it's top left corner.
The two right anchors need to be dragged to the right so that the right edge of your button is anchored to a space inside its parent container.
Depending on your situation, the two bottom arrows may need to be dragged down so that the bottom edge of your button is anchored as well.
The video I linked above covers all this in detail.
Lastly, for the font size to scale nicely on different resolutions, you will need to add and configure a reference resolution component to the base canvas of your UI, as Ash-Bash32 wrote earlier.
Update: The best way to add a Reference Resolution component is through the inspector window for the base canvas in your UI.
1) click the "Add Component Button" at the bottom of the inspector.
2) type the word "Reference" in the search filter field.
3) select the "Reference Resolution" component in the search results.
The Reference Resolution is now renamed as Canvas Scaler.. Along with the renaming they have added many more features for the dynamicity of the Canvas. You can go through the Unity Doc of Canvas Scaler and also take a look at this article for a practical example of how and why to use Canvas Scaler. Also make sure you use the Anchor Points to good effect to make this more robust...
To Scale UI added the ReferenceResolution Component to the Canvas you want to scale.
P.S. Theres no Documention for ReferenceResolution
If you want the button to be the same size for all screens and resolutions, you have to add the canvas scaler component to the canvas and the set the screen match mode to: match width or height, here is the link to the docs, this helps a lot if you want to aim to different sizes or resolutions:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/HOWTO-UIMultiResolution.html
This becomes giant and convoluted once you start laying things out in code AND using a canvas scaler, so I wish to provide a thorough answer to save someone the hours I went through.
First, don't use anchoredPosition to position anything, unless you fully realize it is a 0.0 to 1.0 number. Use the RectTransform localPosition to do the actual laying out, and remember it's in relation to the parent anchor. (I had to lay out a grid from the center)
Second, put a canvas scaler on the parent layout object AND the inner ui pieces. One makes the layout in the right position, the other will resize your elements so they actually show up right. You can't rely on the the parent unless the children also have scalers (and Graphic Raycasters to touch them).
Third, if you have a scaler, DON'T use Screen.width and height, instead assume the screen is the same value you put for the scalers (hopefully you used the same, or know what you're doing). The screen width always returns the actual device pixels, retina devices too, but the canvas scalers DO NOT account for this. This probably gives unity the one remaining way to find actual screen dpi if your game wants it. Edit: This paragraph applies to any parent canvas connected to the code doing your laying out. Not stray canvases, you can probably mix it up. Just remember unity's guidelines on performance with canvases.
Fourth, the canvas is still a bit buggy. Even with the above working, some things don't render until you delete and recreate a canvas, if you re-open the scene or it crashes. Otherwise, the above is the general "rules" I've found.
To center a "grid of things" you can't just use half of the canvas scaler's width or height, you have to calculate the height of your grid and set the offset by half of it, otherwise it will always be slightly off. I just added this as an extra tip. This calculation works for all orientations.
I'm wanting to have a template of a Magic-type card (but with an irregularly shaped art section), where a user can upload their own image and drag it around to place it, but the template will still be in the foreground. I know with the EaselJS library, by default the "hit area" for clicks (to trigger things like click and drag) is only the visible pixels, so you could click "through" the transparent portion of a PNG and drag an element that is under it. So I'm looking for something like that with KineticJS. How would I do that?
Figured it out. createHitRegion is what I was looking for.
I have built so far an application that allows the user to drag and drop images onto a NSImageView. However, I want to be able to move these images by simply clicking on any image and hold down the mouse button to move it's location.
How can I manipulate NSImageView to translate/scale after setting the images down? Is that possible? I've read about the NSAffineTransform, but it seems like that is moving the images before creating the image itself. I already have the images on the canvas, and simply want to click and hold the image and move it with my mouse. Please help anyone!
There are two sides to this.
NSImage is the model object, which you might want to display in different ways, save to disk/archive, etc. If you want to actually change the model (scaling, rotating, etc.), implying a permanent change, then you are going to probably want to look at NSAffineTransform, Quartz drawing, etc.
But you probably didn't mean that. Instead you probably are interested in NSImageView, which is a view object, displaying the contents of the NSImage model object using whatever display attributes are desired. If you only want to change how an image is displayed, not what the actual bytes in the image are, then you are going to manipulate the NSImageView at run-time. You can use NSAffineTransform here as well, but it's somewhat uncommon (and usually unnecessary).
The key thing to note that is the NSImageView inherits from NSView, so you have all its power at your disposal. Take a look at certain methods, such as:
-setFrameSize: - useful for changing the view size, and thus the image display scale
-setFrameOrigin: - useful for changing the view position, and thus the apparent image position
Note again that these have nothing to do with images per se, and apply to all Cocoa views. You may want to take a look at a book like Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X to get you past the basics. (You can then do more interesting things, like rotation, animation, etc.)