Question

I have an IBAction for when a button is clicked:

- (IBAction)importButtonClicked:(id)sender 

And I want a series of events to take place like:

[_progressLabel becomeFirstResponder]; // I tried this but to no effect
_progressLabel.stringValue = BEGIN_IMPORT_STRING;
[_importButton setEnabled:FALSE];
_fileField.stringValue = @"";
[_progressIndicator startAnimation:nil]; 

But what ends up happening is the _progressIndicator animation takes place before the _progressLabel text appears. And often times the text won’t appear untili the _progressIndicator animation has stopped. How do I fix that?

Answer 1

Put the work you’re doing which takes time (I assume that’s what the progress indicator is for) on a separate thread. You don’t have to do this manually in Cocoa, but instead, use Grand Central Dispatch (GCD), NSOperationQueue or such a construct available. You’ll find lots of resources on GCD.