Kentzo / IKApplicationPreferences

Simple and beautiful way to add preferences to your Mac application. Mac OS X 10.6+, 64bit, ARC

Why

Almost every Mac OS X application has a special preferences window, but Apple do not provide any standard solution to build custom preferences. We have to deal with NSWindowController/NSToolbar staff every time. Not good.

IKApplicationPreferences was developed to address this problem.

Out of the box features:

• Window is automatically resized to match size of the view
• Toolbar can be configured using ASCII art! Finally it's very easy to localize preferences
• Toggling views are animated. On pre 10.8 it uses hide/show approach (like in Mail.app or Safari.app) On 10.8+ it uses Core Animation (like in About This Mac introduced in Lion)
• Default window title is localized in almost every language
• Provides methods to cyclically enumerate views. Very useful since order of preferences may depend on user's locale
• Automatic Reference Counting (a.k.a ARC)
• Support for windows restoration.

Requirements

• Mac OS X 10.6+
• x86_64 (new runtime)

Tutorial

IKApplicationPreferences consist of so-named Preferences Representations --- objects that adopts (formally or informally) IKPreferencesRepresentation protocol.

Each Preferences Representation consist of:

• view that represents preferences

• toolbar item

• optionally title

Therefore IKPreferencesRepresentation defines 2 required methods:

- (NSView *)view
- (void)configureToolbarItem:(NSToolbarItem *)anItem

and 1 optional method:

- (NSString *)title

Most convenient (and widely used) way to create preferences representation is to subclass NSViewController and adopt IKPreferencesRepresentation for each representation. Since NSViewController already implements both -view and -title, the only method you have to implement is -configureToolbarItem:.

This method receives an initialized instance of NSToolbarItem that it's supposed to configure. The only properties you cannot change are target and action.

It's time to create an instance of IKApplicationPreferences. As you may already noticed IKApplicationPreferences is a subclass of NSWindowController and it requires a nib to load the window. You may use stock IKApplicationPreferencesWindow.xib or you may create custom nib. See notes how to do this properly.

The designated initialized or IKApplicationPreferences is:

- (instancetype)initWithWindowNibName:(NSString *)aNibName
                         visualFormat:(NSString *)aFormat
                      representations:(NSDictionary *)aRepresentations
                    usesCoreAnimation:(BOOL)aUsesCoreAnimation;

The first parameter is a name of nib we discussed above. The second and third parameters should be familiar to you if you ever worked with NSLayoutConstraint.

• aRepresentations is a dictionary where keys are identifiers and objects are instances of classes that adopt IKPreferencesRepresentation

• aFormat is a string which represents configuration of NSToolbar using ASCII art. It's essentially a comma-separated list of identifiers specified in aRepresentations or standard NSToolbarItem identifiers. It also supports 2 shortcuts: ' '(NSToolbarSpaceItemIdentifier) and '-'(NSToolbarFlexibleSpaceItemIdentifier). E.g. @"general,accounts, ,audio,video,-,about"

• aUsesCoreAnimation If set, Core Animation will be used therefore animation will be much smoother

You can also use preferencesWithWindowNibName:visualFormat:representations:. The only difference is that it lacks aUsesCoreAnimation parameter, because it automaticaly uses Core Animation if target version of Mac OS X is 10.8+.

Already done with that? Great. To show the preferences window simply use standard method of NSWindowController: -showWindow:.

Notes

• The main reason to create custom nib is add views that will be common to any preferences. E.g. custom background or Lock/Unlock view (line in System Preferences.app). Your nib must match the following requirements:

  1. File's Owner MUST be set to IKApplicationPreferences or its subclass.
  2. You MUST set Owner's window to nib's window.
  3. You MUST not bind title of the window.
  4. You MUST add an empty view and set Owner's _representationsRootView to it.
  5. You SHOULD set _representationsRootView's autoresizing mask or constraints so it will be resized with window proportionally. It's not a requirement because you can provide custom layout in your subclass of IKApplicationPreferences.
  6. You SHOULD set class of _representationsRootView to _IKRepresentationRootView. _IKRepresentationRootView is a flipped NSView.
  7. You MUST add Toolbar to the window and set its delegate to Owner.

• Default -titlePlaceholder uses standard CFBundleDisplayName to obtain localized name of you application. If it fails, it uses CFBundleName