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Yesterday we talked about how to make nifty selectable toolbars like this:

Now let's look at the finishing touch for our Preferences window; Animating the panel changes. We'll be flying through this at a pretty good clip, but don't worry. I'll provide the full source for your inspection.

First off, let's add some new outlets to our window controller:

ib_outlets :generalPrefsView,
           :advancedPrefsView

Now in Interface Builder, we'll create the views for each preference pane by dragging Custom Views from the Library onto our Preferences.nib.

Note: Be sure to drop the Custom Views on the main nib window in IB, not on the Preferences NSWindow. Your project (in IB) should look something like this:

Hook up the outlets to the new views, and edit your preference panels to your heart's desire. From here, we go back to the code.

Tip: Be sure to set the auto-sizing on your preference panels (the NSViews) so that it matches the NSWindow's contentView.

Next up are some helper methods for our window controller. I won't spend too much time explaining these, but they're pretty straight forward.

def viewForTag(tag)
  case tag
    when 0: [@generalPrefsView,  "General"]
    when 1: [@advancedPrefsView, "Advanced"]
  end
end

#viewForTag actually returns our NSView and a title string.

def newFrameForNewContentView(view)
  newFrameRect = window.frameRectForContentRect(view.frame)
  oldFrameRect = window.frame
  newSize = newFrameRect.size
  oldSize = oldFrameRect.size
  frame = window.frame
  frame.size = newSize
  frame.origin.y = frame.origin.y - (newSize.height - oldSize.height)
  frame
end

#newFrameForNewContentView calculates the new frame rectangle for the window based on the new view (preference pane).

Now we're ready to fill out our selectPrefPanel action:

ib_action :selectPrefPanel do |sender|
  tag =  sender.tag
  view, title = self.viewForTag(tag)
  previousView, prevTitle = self.viewForTag(@currentViewTag)
  @currentViewTag = tag
  newFrame = self.newFrameForNewContentView(view)
  window.title = "#{title} Preferences"
  # Using an animation grouping because we may be changing the duration
  NSAnimationContext.beginGrouping
    # Call the animator instead of the view / window directly
    window.contentView.animator.replaceSubview_with(previousView, view)
    window.animator.setFrame_display newFrame, true
  NSAnimationContext.endGrouping
end

Right on! Now we setup the initial pane when the window loads:

def awakeFromNib
  window.setContentSize @generalPrefsView.frame.size 
  window.contentView.addSubview @generalPrefsView
  window.title = "General Preferences"
  @currentViewTag = 0
  # Will use CoreAnimation for the panel changes:
  window.contentView.wantsLayer = true
end

That pretty much does it. Now you have a professional looking preferences window. So enough of those dang blasted NSTabViews!

Here's the completed PreferencesController.rb. Or, you can download the full Xcode project. (Requires Leopard, Xcode 3, and Interface Builder 3)

Happy coding!

So you'd like to have some nifty selectable toolbar items to make your preferences window really polished? Or maybe you'd like to use the toolbar as a tab-set like Coda does. No problem, here's how to do it.

Note: I'm using Leopard & Interface Builder 3. You can create selectable toolbars in Tiger, but the process is different and not within the scope of this article.

To start, in the window controller, add an ib_action:

ib_action :selectPrefPanel do |sender|
  # We'll do stuff here later...
end

Then in Interface Builder, create the toolbar and the toolbar items. For each toolbar item:

• Turn off the 'autovalidates' option
• Set the action to target the selectPrefPanel: action on your window controller (probably the File's Owner)

Before you save the Nib, be sure and set the toolbar's delegate to the window controller.

Now back in the window controller code, implement a toolbarSelectableItemIdentifiers method in your controller:

def toolbarSelectableItemIdentifiers(toolbar)
  @toolbaridents ||= begin
    window.toolbar.toolbaritems.collect {|i| i.itemIdentifier }
  end
end

Lastly, when the window loads, select the first toolbar item:

def awakeFromNib
  tb = window.toolbar
  tb.selectedItemIdentifier = tb.toolbarItems[0].itemIdentifier
end

Viola! Now you have selectable toolbar items.

Here's the full source for the window controller.

It's worth mentioning that this isn't specific to RubyCocoa. You can do the same thing in Objective-C, Python, or Nu (example).

Next, I'll show you how to create the views that will go within your preferences window, and how to animate them to really finish it off.

Update: Find the next article here.