Hey all, I'm pretty new to Cocoa and XCode, so I'm sorry if this is a dumb question.
How would I go about checking which window is in focus?
Additionally how would I go about checking if a certain window is in focus, if this is not the same as the previous solution.
Thanks for the help.
There are actually two forms of “focus”:
The window that has the active appearance (colored/dark gray stoplight, black text in title bar, undimmed proxy icon, etc.) is the main window.
The window that receives key events is the key window.
Consider a document window with an Inspector panel. If the user is editing some text in a field in the Inspector, then the document window may be main, but the Inspector panel is key.
To get the key window or the main window, ask the shared NSApplication instance. And, as TechZen noted, you can ask a window both whether it is key and whether it is main.
You looking for 'keyWindow'. It's a property of both NSWindow and NSApplication. It's a bool in the former and a NSWindow instances in the latter.
Related
I want to create a borderless window floating above the main window. The main window should be the key window (I want it to handle the keyboard and mouse events). Also, the floating window should close as the user clicks outside of it. Basically, I'm creating a very custom context menu, just like NSMenu. It should behave likewise.
So I created my window this way:
NSWindow *menuWindow = [NSWindow windowWithContentViewController:menuViewController];
menuWindow.styleMask = NSBorderlessWindowMask;
menuWindow.level = NSFloatingWindowLevel;
[menuWindow makeKeyAndOrderFront:self];
That works perfectly, but how do I handle clicks outside to close it? The window doesn't invoke delegate's windowDidResignKey, because it's not a key window. If it does overload canBecomeKeyWindow (so that it returns YES), then the floating window grabs the user input, which is not what I want.
So, is there any way to automatically close a borderless window? Can NSPanel help? I tried using it, but with no success (the becomesKeyOnlyIfNeeded selector doesn't do what I need).
To detect clicks outside the window but within your app, you could install an event monitor using +[NSEvent addLocalMonitorForEventsMatchingMask:handler:]. If you also want to close the window when the user clicks in a different app, you could observe the NSApplicationDidResignActiveNotification notification.
NSWindow has a property hidesOnDeactivate that should do this for you.
From the Apple Docs:
The value of this property is true if the window is removed from the
screen when its application is deactivated; false if it remains
onscreen. The default value for NSWindow is false; the default value
for NSPanel is true.
I've looked through the NSDocuments docs but can't see any methods for controlling whether window positions are saved. But if I move a window before quitting, that position overrides the window position set in IB.
In your XIB file, select the window. You should see the options on the right of the screen.
The "Restorable" check box should be what you're looking for. I haven't tried this in a document based application but I'm pretty sure it's the same here.
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.
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];
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.