wxruby users - Mar 2008 - TaskBarIcon in OS X

Is the Wx:TaskBarIcon supported under OS X? I can''t seem to get it
working. My code works under Windows, but not OS X. I thought it was
something I was doing, so I tried the bigdemo.rb sample and that
doesnt'' seem to like OS X either.

I''m running OS X 10.5 with wxRuby 1.9.5 gem and ruby 1.8.6.

-dave

-- 
David Grandinetti
(315) 569 2594

David Grandinetti wrote:
> Is the Wx:TaskBarIcon supported under OS X? I can''t seem to get it
> working. My code works under Windows, but not OS X. I thought it was
> something I was doing, so I tried the bigdemo.rb sample and that
> doesnt'' seem to like OS X either.
It does work, but perhaps not in the way you were expecting. wxWidgets 
considers the ''TaskBar'' on OS X to be the dock; if you run
bigdemo, you
should see that the icon in the dock is changed, and has the taskbar 
menu associated with it.

The purpose of the standard desktop elements (eg dock, menu bar, Windows 
taskbar) don''t map exactly from OS to OS, but I think this is seen as 
the closest equivalent. According to the Apple HIG, the area on the 
right of the Menu Bar, where the power status, volume, clock etc is 
"reserved for use by Apple".

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGMOSXEnvironment/chapter_8_section_4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002721-TPXREF139
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGMenus/chapter_17_section_4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000356-CHDFJEAC

PS - there does seem to be a bug on OS X changing the Doc icon. But 
otherwise it works fine.

cheers
alex

Thanks, Alex. You are correct. It does work, just not in the way I was
looking for. Actually, I have come to expect apps to have an icon on
the right of the menu bar if they are meant to run in the
background...like Skype, GMail notifier, etc. I never knew that Apple
considered that incorrect. I''ve never used a menu from the dock icon
either, but now that I''m checking some of my favorite apps out they
have some pretty useful features in there. Very good to know!

I don''t know if this is a issue better taken up with the wxWidgets
developers, but you may consider (even though the Apple HIG guidelines
frown on it) that developers will want to be able to put icons on the
right side of the menu bar.

-dave

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 2:09 AM, Alex Fenton <alex at pressure.to>
wrote:
> David Grandinetti wrote:
>  > Is the Wx:TaskBarIcon supported under OS X? I can''t seem to
get it
>  > working. My code works under Windows, but not OS X. I thought it was
>  > something I was doing, so I tried the bigdemo.rb sample and that
>  > doesnt'' seem to like OS X either.
>  It does work, but perhaps not in the way you were expecting. wxWidgets
>  considers the ''TaskBar'' on OS X to be the dock; if you
run bigdemo, you
>  should see that the icon in the dock is changed, and has the taskbar
>  menu associated with it.
>
>  The purpose of the standard desktop elements (eg dock, menu bar, Windows
>  taskbar) don''t map exactly from OS to OS, but I think this is
seen as
>  the closest equivalent. According to the Apple HIG, the area on the
>  right of the Menu Bar, where the power status, volume, clock etc is
>  "reserved for use by Apple".
>
> 
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGMOSXEnvironment/chapter_8_section_4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002721-TPXREF139
> 
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGMenus/chapter_17_section_4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000356-CHDFJEAC
>
>  PS - there does seem to be a bug on OS X changing the Doc icon. But
>  otherwise it works fine.
>
>  cheers
>  alex
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  wxruby-users mailing list
>  wxruby-users at rubyforge.org
>  http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wxruby-users
>


-- 
David Grandinetti
(315) 569 2594

David Grandinetti wrote:
> I don''t know if this is a issue better taken up with the wxWidgets
> developers, but you may consider (even though the Apple HIG guidelines
> frown on it) that developers will want to be able to put icons on the
> right side of the menu bar.
>   
It''s something that would be implemented in wxWidgets. It''s
been
discussed before:
http://lists.wxwidgets.org/archive/wx-dev/msg40258.html

but it seems to be ruled out by one of the wxWidgets OS X lead devs:
http://lists.wxwidgets.org/archive/wx-dev/msg40273.html

FWIW, I agree with that reasoning.

If you were really certain that a menu bar icon was what you wanted, you 
might be able to create one using Ruby Cocoa. From that htread, looks 
like the relevant class is NSStatusBarItem.

cheers
alex