liushigit / AGScopeBar

Custom scope bar implementation for Cocoa

AGScopeBar

AGScopeBar is a modern implementation of a "scope bar" in OS X UI terms. A scope bar is composed of one or more groups of items, where each item is a button or popup menu. The buttons within a group can be momentary "normal" push buttons, or have a selection mode with zero or more selected, one or more selected, or always only one. The right side of the scope bar can also have an accessory view.

• Modern appearance
• Sleeker API
• More features

Advantages

MGScopeBar, a similar project by Matt Gemmell, has been around for years, but a number of things bugged me about it so I wrote this.

Among the small differences I wanted from MGScopeBar which are noted in the screenshot below:

1. Buttons icons use the new inset look versus being flat gray.
2. Button titles also use the inset look versus being flat black.
3. When a group collapses into a single popup due to space constraints, it doesn't have a big selected background, and fits to the title width.
4. AGScopeBar allows the selection mode where one or more items can be selected, while MGScopeBar does not.

Furthermore, the AGScopeBar API is much sleeker, while being richer. The entirety of MGScopeBar's configuration is done through delegate methods which I find overly verbose, and in my experience thanks to reloadData reloading everything it got me into a very noticeable performance problem that was a nuisance to work around. (Long story). AGScopeBar doesn't have a "reload" metaphor — you simply modify the one thing you want to change directly.

Which would you rather write?

Usage

There are three classes in this project: AGScopeBar is a custom NSView which contains a collection of AGScopeBarGroups. Each group contains a collection of AGScopeBarItems which are the buttons and popups in the bar. Properties on all three classes allow you to tweak appearance, selection behavior, behavior during resizing, enable/disable individual items and groups, or enable/disable the entire bar at once.

Button selection (clicks and on/off) are funelled through the single delegate method:

- (void)scopeBar:(AGScopeBar *)theScopeBar item:(AGScopeBarItem *)item wasSelected:(BOOL)selected;

See the AGScopeBar header for the full API.

Requirements

• OS X 10.6
• Runs in 32 or 64 bit.

License

Licensed under the "zlib" license.

Copyright (c) 2012-2014, Seth Willits

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.

2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.

3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

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Seth Willits http://www.araelium.com/