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The Interface Designer
In The Spotlight
Adding Spotlight-style searching to your app
Issue: 6.1 (November/December 2007)
Author: Toby Rush
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 9,144
Starting Page Number: 44
RBD Number: 6119
Resource File(s): None
Related Web Link(s):
http://www.declaresub.com/code
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/MetadataAttributesRef/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001689
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/MetadataAttributesRef/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001689
Known Limitations: None
Excerpt of article text...
Computers store information: memos, links to useful web sites, e-mails, pictures, music, movies, recipes, doodles, novels... the list can go on and on. Storing the information is easy, as long as there is enough disk space. Finding it, on the other hand, can often be a challenge.
In a REALbasic program, there's a pretty good chance that the interface will need to include the ability for the user to find something, and the "have the user scroll through the list" is generally not a good strategy, especially for lists that can get large. Even sorting the list alphabetically entails quite a bit of browsing on the user's part, and there is always a better way.
That better way is almost always allowing the user to search for a particular bit of text. In the ultra-responsive world of Mac OS X, the usual interface involves having matching items show up as the user is typing the string. And as with many other things in the Macintosh interface, Mac OS X has a consistent interface for doing searches: Spotlight, which is recognized by its familiar magnifying glass icon.
...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.
Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
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