Re: "hooking" into another app
Re: "hooking" into another app
- Subject: Re: "hooking" into another app
- From: Christopher Nebel <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:13:57 -0700
On Apr 15, 2008, at 3:20 PM, Ricky Sharp wrote:
On Apr 15, 2008, at 5:13 PM, Jens Alfke wrote:
On 15 Apr '08, at 3:07 PM, Don Arnel wrote:
Actually, after playing around with the Accessibility API I've
found that changing the layout of UI elements won't adversely
affect the external app's code at all.
Changing the x/y coords of views in the nib won't, but other types
of changes might, since the views just seem to be identified
according to some numeric order. It might be the tab (responder-
chain) order, or the order in which the views are listed in the
compiled nib, but in any case it could change if the nib is
changed. For example, if you decide to change the tab ordering, or
if you delete a button and replace it with a new one.
See prior e-mail regarding GUI scripting. I've personally done all
of the above, and it had zero impact on my app being fully
accessible. I like to think of the accessibility frameworks as
offering users this: "tell me what's there and I'll interact with it".
Just because your application is accessible doesn't mean it's
accessible in exactly the same ways, and that's what's required if
you're going to start treating the accessibility of another
application as API. The second bit is exactly correct, and the key
point is that that's *all* it does -- it lets you discover and
manipulate what's on the screen *right now*. This is perfectly
sufficient for an assistive program like VoiceOver, but notice that it
makes no guarantees about what will be on the screen tomorrow, even
for the same application. Attempting to write client application that
works by manipulating another app's UI presumes a level of stability
that really isn't there. Maybe it'll work next time the application
or OS is updated, maybe not. This may be acceptable for your
purposes, but you should be aware of the risk.
--Chris N.
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