Application Preferences Window

Scripting Forums AppleScript Studio & Xcode
#1

Hello all,

I’ve built a nifty little application, now I’d like to pretty it up.

I’m looking to makeover my preferences window, which currently uses tabs, and make it look more like a real application’s preferences window might look. This would be a toolbar with custom icons and various panels for settings.

I’ve taken apart some application’s NIBs and it just doesn’t seem consistent. Coda has a nice Preferences window, I just don’t get how it works, they have all their panes as separate views, and one window, but that window has no toolbar and I’m not sure how you make the toolbar, the icons, and make it so they switch between panels. I dissected Safari, and it stores each settings panel as a separate NIB, but I see no mail NIB for the Preferences window itself.

So, I’m lost, dazed, and confused.

How can I make myself one of those pretty Preferences windows? All the resizing and image buttons are so nice, but so elusive!

Any direction would be truly wonderful. I do know a few things, but Objective-C is not one of them, so if it has to do with that, I could use hand and a finger pointing me in the direction of finding out how to write the code need, and where to put it.

Thanks in advance!!!

#2

Hi,

of course you can do it with Obj-C but this is more than one hand and a finger :wink:
I haven’t tested it, but the toolbar elements are accessible with AppleScript if the sheet to customize the toolbar is open.
You can add new elements and name a single element and connect it to the on clicked handler

#3

When the toolbar is open, I can drag NSToolBarItem into the toolbar, but it doesn’t show up, and I can’t seem to link an image to it, or make it do much of anything.

I hope there is someway to do this, this would be absolutely perfect.