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Re: [APP IDEA] Desktop Background Scripting
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Re: [APP IDEA] Desktop Background Scripting


  • Subject: Re: [APP IDEA] Desktop Background Scripting
  • From: "M. Uli Kusterer" <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 19:41:47 +0100

At 9:49 Uhr -0500 25.01.2004, Nebagakid wrote:
I know some Cocoa programming, but not enough to make what I am hoping this to be. Are you interested in developing it? It would have to lay above the desktop picture, but below the icons.

Sorry, don't have the time to tackle another project right now.

But it's really easy, and a great project for a beginning Cocoa programmer. There are only three things you need to do:

1) Create a window in between the desktop icons window and the actual desktop window. This is fairly easy. Just take any NSWindow and use its setLayer: method and set the layer to kCGDesktopIconWindowLevel -1, or something like that.

2) Make that window transparent, so parts of the desktop can "shine through" where you want. To do that, you will have to use the window's setOpaque: method to make it not-opaque, and you will have to create the window using initWithFrame:, which lets you specify NSBorderlessWindowMask or something like that.

3) Draw your plugins into that window. If you want to know how to implement plugins, there's a very good article on implementing plugins in Cocoa applications at http://www.cocoadevcentral.com . Basically I'd just create a plugin that creates/deletes a couple of views in the NSWindow.

If you should be left with specific questions after attempting to write such an app yourself, I'm sure you'll be able to find a lot of good information by searching the Cocoa mailing list archives at http://cocoa.mamasam.com , and there's also lots of useful info in the Wiki at http://www.cocoadev.com , and should you really find no answer there, you can still ask on Cocoa-Dev.
--
Cheers,
M. Uli Kusterer
------------------------------------------------------------
"The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
http://www.zathras.de
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References: 
 >[APP IDEA] Desktop Background Scripting (From: Nebagakid <email@hidden>)
 >Re: [APP IDEA] Desktop Background Scripting (From: "M. Uli Kusterer" <email@hidden>)

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