December 2012
Beginner
398 pages
9h 6m
English
Content preview from Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, 3rd EditionBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 5. Graphical User Interfaces
The graphical user interface is one of the defining features of modern computers. No personal computer sold to consumers these days lacks a GUI, and the only time people work with a machine that doesn’t present information graphically is when they’re working with a server, supercomputer, or other specialized tool. Displaying a graphical interface to your user is fundamental to developing with Cocoa, and understanding both how to design an appealing and usable GUI and how to implement that GUI are critical skills for Cocoa developers.
This chapter covers the user interface system available in Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, in addition to implementing a UI. Designing a usable and pleasant UI is a huge topic that wouldn’t fit in this chapter (let alone in this book!), so if you’re interested in learning about what makes a user interface great, take a look at Tapworthy by Josh Clark (O’Reilly). You’ll also learn about Core Animation, the animation system on both OS X and iOS.
Interfaces in OS X and iOS
While both iOS devices and OS X present their interfaces via a screen, the differences in how they accept user input mean that these interfaces are quite different.
On OS X, the top-level object is the window. Windows contain controls, such as buttons, labels, and text fields, and can be moved around the screen to suit the user. More than one window is displayed on the screen at a time. Some windows can be resized, which means that windows need to know how to ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.