Tiger-style popup menus

[Mikuro]

I'm trying to make a popup menu in the same style the Finder uses in its Find/Smart Folder window, but I can't get the little arrows to be in the right position. This is the code I'm using to change my normal NSPopUpButton into the new style:

[button setBezelStyle:NSRoundRectBezelStyle];

('button' is an IBOutlet).

The problem here is that the arrows appear in the center of the button, rather than at the right. That can be fixed by adding this line...

[[button cell] setArrowPosition:NSPopUpArrowAtBottom];

...but then the arrows are too far to the right, overlapping the rounded edge of the button. (See attached pic.)

What am I doing wrong? (And am I just not seeing the options to access this style in InterfaceBuilder, or do I really need to do it through code?)

 

[riccbhard]

I dont know anything about programming except VB. (Hoping to get RealBasic for Mac soon) But it appears, if there is way to fine adjust the arrows, They probably need to be moved about 5-8 pixels to the left.

 

[Mikuro]

If there is a way to fine-tune it, it's eluded me.

Actually, upon further inspection, it looks like Apple is using a custom image for their arrows on those popup menus. If you look closely, you'll see that the arrows in the Finder are not quite black, whereas the standard arrows are. I haven't played around much with putting icons on any kind of button in Cocoa, so I'll look into this later (when I get around to it; I'll want to fix it up nice before I release my program, but for now it'll wait).

Seems odd that Apple wouldn't make this all standard. I wonder if they don't really want third-party developers using this style. There's no way to access it in Interface Builder, after all, so it's really a bit of a pain to wrangle. Hmm.

<mini-rant> I really wonder why Apple insists on continuously introducing new interface styles. The Mac OS's legendary consistency of UI has kinda gone out the window. And the new Aqua/Metal "unified" window style is especially bizarre, if you ask me. Doesn't serve any real purpose that I can see, and it's not winning any beauty contests, either. It's really ugly in some of apps they use it in, too, like Xcode (since most of the windows are covered by controls, the bottom part just looks WAY too dark). </mini-rant>

 

[riccbhard]

Maybe making the arrow picture a little longer, but transparent on one side so it aligns right? Or is it an image?

 

[texanpenguin]

It's the same drop-down menus as in iTunes 4.7 and 4.8, I see.

Surely there's some convention on their use from Apple if they're using them in iTunes and Finder.

Although I strongly agree that Apple is ignoring what were once the best H.I.G. in the industry for the sake of some iota of visual change from one OS revision to the next.