I'm pretty sure i've seen this somewhere (not counting the help menu), and I feel like you could just drag one in under ib in leopard. Not that it matters, but it will either go into a dock menu or a service. Thanks
Try setting an NSTextField as the view of an NSMenuItem.
You can do this in IB by dragging the text field into the nib as a top-level object and setting the menu item's view outlet to point to the field.
Tricky thing you may need to solve in your app: In the IB simulator, at least, pressing return/enter did not dismiss the menu.
Related
How can my menubar application achieve the same behaviours as 1Password or Dropbox:
clicking their menu bar icons or popovers does not steal focus, e.g. while I am in for example TextEdit and open 1Password/Dropbox, the blinking cursor disappears but the window itself does not go into the background, yet I can type into 1Password's text field.
even though they didn't take focus in the first place, they disappear when I click back into another application
I figured out how mouse over works in the Dropbox popover table view by using an NSTrackingArea with the options MouseEnteredAndExited, AssumeInside, and ActiveAlways.
I am trying to get the same behaviour to work in an NSPopover that opens from an NSStatusItem.
I found a workaround for now. I am able to get the same behaviour by using non-activating NSPanel with a window level kCGPopUpMenuWindowLevelKey and I had to override canBecomeKeyWindow to return true.
Unfortunately I haven't found a way yet to get a NSPopover to behave this way since it's not a subclass of NSWindow.
To set the kind of behavior you are describing you use:
yourPopover.behavior = .transient
I've created an interface nib/xib file. The app is basically working, which is cool. The standard toolbar buttons look bad, they're glossy and raised, while most apps in Lion have the flat, inner bevel look. So I created some image toolbar buttons and put them in the toolbar and they look great, but they're all disabled by default.
Is there a way to give these the correct state in InterfaceBuilder or do I have to use code to give them the proper state.
Cocoa and Objective C are very unfamiliar so it would be helpful to me if I just knew what to search for. Most of my searching brings me results for creating custom buttons for iOS.
I figured this out, here's what you do:
In the nib/xib file, double click your menu bar to show the "allowed toolbar items" sheet. From here, choose your button that you've created. In my case I'll select a back button that I want to connect to a webview control. Ctrl click + drag from the button to what you want to connect it to and then make the appropriate connection. In my case I choose goBack from the WebView.
Once it has a connection it now becomes active.
XCode works in mysterious ways (at least to me).
I simply want to create a Preference pane in my app. When I run my app, the stock menu bar comes up (Apple, MyApp, File, Edit...) and the "Preferences" menu item is grayed out. It makes sense since I haven't started playing with it.
How on earth do I add/remove/activate/inactivate menu items? I'm not talking about adding anything new, simply using what should be there.
Thanks in advance.
NSMenu has "Auto Enable Items" enabled by default. That means if the menu item does not have it's action message hooked up, it will appear grayed out. So in your case, you would simply set the Preferences menu item's "Sent Action" to whatever action shows your preferences window. This can be hooked to some sort of showPreferencesWindow: method of your AppDelegate, or directly to the showWindow: method of a window controller.
To dynamically enable/disable menu items the best way is to implement the NSUserInterfaceItemValidation protocol which is excellently documented here
Edit: Your app's menu bar items live in the MainMenu.xib file. The menu bar appears as a "Main Menu" object on the left hand side (if you're using Xcode 4) Simply click on the items to modify them, and you can Ctrl+drag connections to and from them like any UI object.
I've been playing around with a statusbar menu app and what I'd like it to do is to update the content of the menu when it is clicked. I've been able to get everything working on the awakefromnib function and it works as expected. Now i just want to update the menu everytime I click on the status bar. This surely can be done, since it's done in the dropbox statusbar menu and many of the native app statusbar menus. I'm not able to associate a action directly with the click of the menu and I don't want to leave a loop running in the background cause I don't really see a need for it. Any ideas? An alternative would be to have an action associated to a menu item which does not cause the menu to get hidden again. Any help would be welcome.
Just set a delegate for your menu, and implement the -(void)menuWillOpen:(NSMenu *)menu method.
I wrote a little app that lives in the NSStatusBar. I want to have a global shortcut that when hit, the menu bar's content is displayed, exactly like the behavior of spotlight.
I have added a global key shortcut to my application, but I am unable to get the meun bar to display. How can I do this? I tried with "popUpContextMenu" , but that method displays the menu in the bottom left hand corner, I want the menu to open up right under the NSStatusBar menu icon.
You can do it, apple provides a method for it popUpStatusItemMenu:
I don't think there is a supported way to do this without perhaps using the Accessibility framework to simulate a click on your status item. Regardless, it's probably not a good idea to abuse a menu in this way.
The Spotlight menu bar item does not use an NSMenu, it uses a custom window/view. You might consider going this route if you have some sort of custom view to display.