Re: Aqua-style custom views
Re: Aqua-style custom views
- Subject: Re: Aqua-style custom views
- From: Scott Anguish <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 05:15:26 -0400
Ah.. I see
Mostly these are built up of images, most of which live in various
system frameworks..
Issues do arise though when things happen like with Panther.. if you
look at the UI shots on Apple's web site, it's different in many ways..
this wouldn't translate well to this situation..
I'd suggest filing an enhancement bug asking for these images to be
made public. Or, requesting documentation on how to reproduce things
like the colorizing in the button.. that might be easier to provide...
On Oct 22, 2003, at 3:34 AM, Matthew D Hancher wrote:
I think you need to clarify what you mean by in the "Aqua" style...
Clearly the various standard controls have many things in common, such
as highlight color and shape, shadow opacity and shape, curvature of
rounded corners, and so forth. These are all elements that could be
applied to widgets that can't just be a simple subclass of a standard
control.
It seems like Apple could release a set of tools that allowed you to
programmatically build widgets out of lower-level user interface units
of some sort. That way if they decided to make some changes to the
look of the OS down the road, all the carefully-crafted custom widgets
would not be suddenly obsoleted.
Colorizing an arbitray button-like region would be one sort of service
it could provide. You can use NSBitmapImage's
colorizeByMappingGray:etc
method to get about the right effect, but that's not the right
solution.
There could be a simple method that just performed whatever image
operation corresponded to that user's settings for highlighting in that
version of the OS.
I don't even think it would be that terrible to take an arbitrary
shape, perhaps specified by a closed Bezier path, and programmatically
render a button-like object with reasonable highlights, a subtle
drop shadow, and so forth.
In general it seems like the thing to do would be to take a look at
the range of custom widgets that people wind up having to make, and
then figure out what sorts of lower-level tools would (a) make it
easier for them to do that sort of thing and (b) provide a little
more uniformity with the look of the OS.
Or is there some set of tools that I have just failed to notice?
Now that I'm looking more closely, I'm noticing more and more subtle
variations between custom controls in different apps, which make me
think that everyone is being forced to reinvent the wheel....
Matt
Given that Apple has been pushing Cocoa as the Way of
the Future, surely there must be a way to build custom Cocoa controls
in the Aqua style? Any advice?
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.