Article Preview
Buy Now
| Print: | |
| PDF: |
Interface Design
Throw it on the Dash, Part III
Write your own Dashboard Widget
Issue: 4.2 (November/December 2005)
Author: Toby Rush
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 9,452
Starting Page Number: 42
RBD Number: 4220
Resource File(s):
4220.sit Updated: Thursday, November 17, 2005 at 12:43 PM
Related Link(s): None
Known Limitations: None
Excerpt of article text...
In the last two issues, we have gone through the process of creating a simple widget: a simple utility that exists on the Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. This time, we'll take our simple widget and add some additional customizability to it.
Rolling the Dice
Our project thus far has given us a functional dice-rolling widget; the simple interface includes only the face of the die and a "Roll" button to roll the die. (If you didn't go through the project from the last issue, you can find an "in-progress" version of the project on the REALbasic Developer web site.)
We are now going to add the capability to limit the roll to a number less than six; for example, we want the user to be able to roll a two- or five-sided die if she wishes. To do this, we need to allow the user to set the die roll preference, and we'd like to have that value stored somewhere so the preference doesn't need to be reset every time the widget is opened.
The way that preferences are handled in widgets is to enable a "backside" to the widget; the user clicks a button and the widget appears to flip over, revealing controls for setting preferences. The button used to flip the widget over is a small, italicized, lower case "i" that fades in when the cursor is moved over the widget. Further feedback is given when the cursor is placed over the "i" button: a solid circle appears behind the italicized letter, begging the user to click it.
...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.
Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
|
