Well, the title almost says it all : Why should I not move a GUI (e.g. Gtk) window on screen from the code ? In Gtk 3 there was an API for moving windows on screen, but it was removed in Gtk 4, because it is not good to move a window from code; only the user should do so (don't ask me to provide sources for that, I read it somewhere but have forgotten where and cannot find it). But I cannot think of any reason why it shouldn't be good, but of several reasons why it could be good, for example to restore the position of a window between application restarts. Could you please shed some light on this ?
The major reason why is that it can't possibly work cross-platform, so it is broken API by definition. That’s also why it was removed in GTK4. For example: this is impossible to implement when running on top of a Wayland session, since the protocol doesn't allow getting/setting global coordinates. If you still want to have something similar working, you'll have to call the specific platform API (for example, X11) for those platforms that you want to support.
On the reason why it’s not supported by some display protocols: it’s bad for UX and security. In terms of UX: some compositors can have special behavior because they need to work on a small device, or because they have a kiosk mode in which everything should always run fullscreen, or they provide a tiling experience. Applications positioning their windows themselves then tend to give unexpected behaviour. In terms of security: if you allow this, it’s technically possible for an application to reposition and resize itself so that it covers your screens while making itself transparent, without it being noticeable, which means it has the possibility of scraping all input.
This seems like an easy thing but I'm coming mainly from the Win world to Mac. Is there a way I can make notification alerts bigger? Or install a different App that will do this?
Right now if I notice them, I see a little alert boxes in the upper right of the desktop when a calendar appointment comes up. I have no sound...and might not be sitting at the desk anyhow...so if I have a lot of windows up and happen not to look at the upper right (actually of two screens)...I just miss the notification. I'd like to have a lot of control over those pop ups. Size, perhaps different actions (flash the screen until acknowledged?) etc. At the very least it's just not useful to me at all unless I can increase the size of the popups somehow. Jack up the font size? Again, maybe some different app that I need? Etc.
Thanks in advance! Man I can't seem to hit on the magic Google input to return anything useful on this topic.
After some research, amazingly it seems there is no way to customize OS X native notification display. The best I have come up with, in theory but not personally tested, is to add a third party notification app called Growl which is much more customizable, and then add an app that produces Growl notifications based on iCal entries. I haven't done this yet because it seems like a lot of hassle and overkill...so for now I've been living with the native notifications. When I have time I'll try the Growl route...unless I see something different posted here.
For a while now I've disliked the default folder browser dialog in Windows:
Granted, at least it has the text box with autocomplete; but if you go strictly with the tree view, it can take a lot of clicks and scrolling to get where you want!
It'd be nice if I could develop a superior (to my taste) UI and have this override my system's default. That is, whenever an application requests a native folder browser from Windows on my system, I'd like to be able to define my own such control so that it will be displayed instead of the built-in one. Naturally I could/would then also offer this to others to install on their systems if they like.
Does Windows provide an API to override this particular feature? Maybe via a shell extension or something like that? (I've never done anything that interacts directly with the OS like that; so I don't even know where to start looking.)
Basically I am asking if this OS-level functionality is configurable within Windows.
An app called FlashFolder seems to have done that, and has a lot of good reviews (meaning it at least works for someone) but doesn't work for me at all on Windows 8. If you have an earlier version of Windows perhaps you'll have more luck.
I'm from a Windows programming background when writing tools, but have been programming using Carbon and Cocoa for the past year. I have introduced myself to Mac by, I admit it, hiding from UI programming. I've been basically wapping my OpenGL code in a view, then staying in my comfort zone using my platform agnostic OpenGL C++ code as usual.
However, now I want to start porting one of my more sophisticated applications to Mac OS.
Typically I use the standard Visual Studio dockable MDI approach, which is excellent, but very Windows-like. From using a Mac primarily now for a while, I don't tend to see this sort of method used for Mac UIs. Even Xcode doesn't support the idea of drag and drop/dockable views, unfortunately. I see docked views with splitter panels, but that's about it.
The closest thing I've seen to the Visual Studio approach is Photoshop CS4, which is pretty nice.
So what is the general consensus on this? Is there are more Mac-like way of achieving the same thing that I haven't seen? If not, I'm happy to write a window manager in Cocoa myself, so that I can finally delve in an learn what looks like an excellent API.
Note, I don't want to use QT or any other cross-platform libraries. The whole point is that I want to make a Mac app look like a Mac app, leave the Windows app looking like a Windows app. I always find the cross-platform libraries tend to lose this effect, and when I see a native Mac UI, with fancy Cocoa transitions and animations, I always smile. It's also a good excuse for me to learn Cocoa.
That being said, if there is an Open Source Cocoa library to do this, I'd love to know about it! I'd love to see how someone else achieves this, and would help smooth the Cocoa learning curve.
Cheers,
Shane
UPDATE: I forgot to mention a critical point. I support plugins, which can have their own UI to display various plugin specific information. I don't know which plugins will be loaded and I don't know where their UI will live, if I don't support docking. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this, specifically: How do I support a plugin view architecture, if the UI can't change? Where do I put the plugin views?
Coming from a Windows background, you feel the need to have docking windows, but is it really essential to the app? Apple's philosophy (in my opinion) is that the designer knows better than the user how things should look and work. For example, iTunes is a pretty sophisticated app, but it doesn't let you change the UI around, change the skin, etc., because Apple wants to keep it consistent. They offer the full view, the mini player, and a handful of different viewing options, but they don't let you pull the source list off into a separate window, or dock it in other positions. They think it should be on the left, so there it stays...
You said you "want to make a Mac app look like a Mac app", and as you pointed out, Mac apps don't tend to have docking windows. Therefore, implementing your own docking windows is probably a step in the wrong direction ;)
+1 to Ken's answer.
From a user perspective unless its integral to the app like it is in Adobe CS or Eclipse i want everything as concise as possible and all the different options and displays out of my way so i can focus on the document.
I think you will find with mac users that those who have the "user skill" to make use of rearranging panels will in most cases opt for hot key bindings instead, and those who dont have that level of "skill" youre just going to confuse.
I would recommend keeping it as simple as possible.
One thing that's common among many Mac apps is the ability to hide all the chrome and focus on your content. That's the point behind the "tic tac" toolbar control in the top right corner of many windows. A serious weakness of many docking UIs is that they expect you to have the window take up most of the screen, because the docked panels can obscure content. Even if docked panels are collapsable, the space left by them is often just wasted and filled with white space. So, if you build a docking panel into your interface, you should expect it to be visible most of the time. For example, iTunes' source list is clearly designed to be visible all the time, but you can double-click a playlist to open it in a new window.
To get used to the range of Mac controls, I'd suggest you try doing some serious work with some apps that don't have a cross-platform UI; for example, the iWork apps, Interface Builder or Preview. Take note of where controls appear and why—in toolbars, in bottom bars, in inspectors, in source lists/sidebars, in panels such as IB's Library or the Font and Color panels, in contextual HUDs. Don't forget the menu bar either. Get an idea of the feel of controls—their responsiveness, modality, sizing, grouping and consistency. Try to develop some taste—not everything is perfect; just try iCal if you want to have something to make fun of.
Note that there's no "one size fits all" for controls, which can be an issue with docking UIs. It's important to think about workflow: how commonly used the control would be, whether you can replace it with direct manipulation, whether a visible indication of its state is necessary, whether it's operable from the keyboard and mouse where appropriate, and so forth. Figure out how the control's placement and behavior lets the user work more efficiently.
As a simple example of example of a good versus bad control placement and behavior in otherwise-decent applications, compare image masking in OmniGraffle and Keynote. In OmniGraffle, this uses the Image inspector where you have to first click on an unlabeled button ("Natural size") in order to enable the appropriate controls, then adjust size and position away in a low-fidelity fashion with an image thumbnail or by typing percentages into fields. Trying to resize the frame directly behaves in a bizarre and counterintuitive fashion.
In Keynote, masking starts with a sensibly named menu item or toolbar item, uses a HUD which pops up the instant you click on a masked image and allows for direct manipulation including a sensible display of the extent of the image you're masking. While you're dragging a masked image around, it even follows the guides. Advanced users can ignore the HUD entirely, just double-clicking the image to toggle mask editing and using the handles for sizing. It should be easy to see, with a few caveats (e.g. the state of "Edit Mask" mode should be visible in the HUD rather than just from the image; the outer border of the image you're masking should be more effectively used) Keynote is substantially better at this, in part because it doesn't use an inspector.
That said, if you do have a huge number of options and the standard tabbed inspector layout doesn't work for you, check out the Omni Group's OmniInspector framework. Try to use it for good, and hopefully you'll figure out how to obsess over UI as much as you do over graphics now :-)
(running in slow motion, reaching out in panic) Nnnnnoooooooo!!!!!
:-) Seriously, as I mentioned in reply to Ken's excellent answer, trying to force a "Windowsism" on an OS X UI is definitely a bad idea. In my opinion, the biggest problem with Windows UI is third-party developers inventing new and inconsistent ways of presenting UI, rather than being consistent and following established conventions. To a Mac user, that's the sign of a terrible application. It's that way for a reason.
I encourage you to rethink your UI app's implementation from the ground up with the Mac OS in mind. If you've done your job well, the architecture and model (sans platform-specific implementation) should clearly translate to any platform.
In terms of UI, you've been using a Mac for a year, so you should have a pretty good idea of "the norm". If you have doubts, it's best to post a question specifically detailing what you need to present and your thoughts on how you might do it (or asking how if you have no idea).
Just don't whack your app with the ugly stick by forcing it to behave as if it were running in Windows when it's clearly not. That's the kiss of death for an app to Mac users.
I would like to extend some existing applications' drag and drop behavior, and I'm wondering if there is any way to hack on drag and drop support or changes to drag and drop behavior by monitoring the app's message loop and injecting my own messages.
It would also work to monitor for when a paste operation is executed, basically to create a custom behavior when a control only supports pasting text and an image is pasted.
I'm thinking Detours might be my best bet, but one problem is that I would have to write custom code for each app I wanted to extend. If only Windows was designed with extensibility in mind!
On another note, is there any OS that supports extensibility of this nature?
If you're willing to do in-memory diddling while the application is loaded, you could probably finagle that.
But if you're looking for an easy way to just inject code you want into another window's message pump, you're not going to find it. The skills required to accomplish something like this are formidable (unless someone has wrapped all of this up in an application/library that I'm unaware of, but I doubt it). It's like clipboard hooking, writ-large: it's frowned upon, there are tons of gotchas, and you're extremely likely to introduce significant instability into your system if you don't really know what you're doing.
Well, think of this from the point of view of the app designer. If you wrote an application, do you want users to be able to inject things into your application (more importantly, would you want to incur the support/revenue headache of clueless users doing this and then blaming you)? Each application's drag and drop infrastructure is written specifically for the application, not to allow you to drop anything you want onto it (potentially causing crashes and all sorts of other nasty behaviour when you drag something onto an app that simply can't handle it). Stuff like this is hard to do for a reason.
It is possible to do, but it's a lot of work: you need to acquire the window handle of the thing you want to drop something onto, and then replace that window's message handler with your own. That's fraught with danger, of course, since you either have to replicate all of the existing functionality of that window yourself, or risk the app not working correctly.
Hm thats really too bad. I suppose there are sometimes reasons why apps don't exist yet. Basically what I'm trying to do is simplify the process of sending image links to people using various apps (mainly web browser text forms, but also anytime I'm editing in a terminal window) by hooking the process of pasting an image in a text context, uploading the image in the background, and pasting a url to where the image was uploaded all with a single action.
Edit: I suppose the easier solution to this is to just create a new keyboard combo that is hooked by my app before it gets to any other app. There's no reason in particular that I need to tie it to copy/paste functionality.