tags:

views:

187

answers:

1
Q: 

How to customize NSMenu like the Apple Pro Apps?

I want to customize a NSMenu with NSMenuItems, so does it looks like the Apple Pro Apps.

But how can I customize a NSMenu? There is no draw method to change the appearance. If I set a NSView to a NSMenuItem, I can set the background color, but I will loose highlighting and menu handling. Furthermore the top and bottom cap of the NSMenu cannot be customized.

I found only this hint, but unfortunately without code: http://osdir.com/ml/cocoa-dev/2009-06/msg00426.html

I would be very happy for some help!

A: 

Without a screenshot as to what these pro app menus look like it's hard to help you out. Complex menus are sometimes implemented as custom windows.

Matt Gemmell has some open source components that may be useful. Particularly MAAttachedWindow.

Matthieu Cormier  2010-03-30 19:14:25
Thank you for your reply. If I use a window, I have to implement all menu handling functions. I thought there is a way to customize a NSMenu by subclassing!?Here is a screenshot where you can see what I mean:http://img145.yfrog.com/i/bildschirmfoto20100331u.png/
Matt  2010-03-31 08:30:36
Most likely, Apple is doing that by subclassing an internal class that is not accessible from the public API. You will have to build something from scratch if you want to emulate that look.
Matthieu Cormier  2010-04-06 17:28:13
Or they're using some underlying Carbon HI API directly. It's not necessarily possible to do everything with Cocoa (although at this stage most things are possible).
quixoto  2010-05-12 05:01:22

related questions

How do you set your Cocoa application as the default web browser?
When to create Interface Builder plug-in for custom view?
How can I use Core Animation to interpolate property values over time on my own classes?
Opening a non-standard URL in a Cocoa app
How to take screenshot in Mac OS X using Cocoa or C++
Error Code Reference for OSX/Cocoa
What's a good way to write a Cocoa front-end to an Erlang application?
Cocoa tips for PHP developers?
What is the best way to unit test Objective-C code?
Best way to export a QTMovie with a fade-in and fade-out in the audio
NSEnumerator performance vs for loop in Cocoa
Objective-C: Passing around sets of data
InputManager on OS X
Can you use CruiseControl to build Cocoa/Objective-C projects?
Height of NSTextView with one line?
Developer Setup for Starting Out with Cocoa/Mac Programming
Objective-C/Cocoa: How do I accept a bad server certificate?
Drawing a view hierachy into a specific context in Cocoa
Why is the PyObjC documentation so bad?
In Cocoa do I need to remove an Object from receiving KVO notifications when deallocating it?
In Cocoa do you prefer NSInteger or just regular int, and why?
Cocoa - best way to capture key events in NSTextView?
How do you name your instance/param values?
Cocoa and Objective-C resources?
Understanding reference counting with Cocoa / Objective C