Question

I am going to make an OS X application with several views and windows.

It has several screens – splash, login/register and the main screen(and so on).

I tried to use NSWindowControllers. However, it’s so complex to use and I’m confused.

What is the best experience in the view/window transitions?

Answer 1

The main pattern I use is the follow:

• Create a New File User Interface Window and save it as nameYouLike
• Create a New File Cocoa Objective-C class of NSWindowController subclass and save is as nameYouLikeDelegate
• Go to nameYouLike NSWindow and change it’s File's Owner Class to nameYouLikeDelegate
• Connect window and other objects you need of xib with an IBOutlet to nameYouLikeDelegate.h

• In some init/show method do this:

  - (void)showWindow {
      if (!self.window) {
          [NSBundle loadNibNamed:@"nameYouLike" owner:self];
      }
  
      [self.window makeKeyAndOrderFront:self];
  }
  

• Save reference in some way (f.e. in AppDelegate or NSWindowController of another window):

  nameYouLikeDelegate *fNameYouLikeDelegate;
  

• Now when you need to create your window you use:

  fNameYouLikeDelegate = [[nameYouLikeDelegate alloc] init];
  

• And to show it:

  [fNameYouLikeDelegate showWindow];