Sean Patrick O’Brien, a fairly new Cocoa developer has recently released an iLife Controls framework. This allows you to create HUD Windows and controls such as buttons, sliders, popup menus etc. and also a smooth metal type window (again with controls such as buttons and frames).

Heads-up-display with a window, subclassed with the framework.

With everyone trying to keep up with Apple’s interface additions, this isn’t a bad way to go about it. The framework includes a lot of subclasses and some of them needed to be added to Interface Builder in order for the hierarchy to show, so I’ve uploaded a simple project to show what this framework can do. It’s not completely bug-free; in fact, there are quite a number of creepy-crawlies, but the idea is there, and this looks to be the beginning of quite a handsome project.

Download sample project

Download just the framework source

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to thank Sean

The next big thing after My Dream App, MacHeist is set to be a huge event with many app give-aways. I was lucky enough to be among the initial handful who got invited to this spectacular program. The forum is alive with activity, Hubert is being idolized and stuck on hundreds of Dashboards worldwide, and most importantly, preparations are being made for the first heist, set to start … very soon ;).

If you’re sitting at the sideline, caught in a wild monkey chase, and want to be a part of the action, here’s your chance! Some MacHeist members have been given precious invites, and I’ve got three of them, ready to hand out. Remember, these are very rare, valuable items, and I’m willing to give them away for free. What do you have to do? Simple. Post a comment saying why you want an invite, and the top three replies get one each. Of course, bribes such as linking to this post, etc. may help.

With all the fuss over Disco and it’s smoke effect, Jonathan Wight decided to take a deeper look. The result of his labor - anyone can integrate smoking windows into their apps. Stick around and let me show you how.

If you’re like me, one of the first things you do when you see a cool app is dig straight into the resources folder. Well, right-clicking on Disco.app and hitting “Show package contents” is pretty revealing. Charge straight into the Contents folder, and you’ll see a nice little folder bearing the name “Frameworks”. Need I say any more? Just like all you need for Core Graphics is contained within my Core Graphics Framework, so the smoking windows code is contained in this little folder. It’s a simple matter of doing a class-dump to build some headers (or if you got in early, the headers are already there), and you have access to all the smoke you need. So, are you interested? Download the Disco beta and drag it to your applications folder. Then, you may proceed to grab a copy of my (modified) version of the smoking windows project and play around with it at your leisure! I quote from Toxic Software:

If your hardware is capable enough you should be able to see the smoke effect rising from the top of the window. (It might take 10 to 20 seconds for the smoke to appear). You can change the smoke parameters by using the smoke settings window (dialog? pane? view?) within Disco. Then just copy Disco’s prefs (com.discoapp.Disco.plist) to SecondHandSmoke’s prefs (com.example.SecondHandSmoke.plist).

Obviously, this way of setting preferences isn’t very flash, so you can just set the specific preference keys from within your code, and it’ll still run fine. Don’t expect that done from me, though, I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on. Then again, if someone wants to make their window smoke and can’t get their head around the preferences, I can always take a little break and help you out.

Second Hand Smoke

Have fun, and try not to get addicted to smoking.

Update: This smoke no longer works with the version 1.0 release of Disco. Updated smoking instructions here.