Wizard-like dialog

Question

Created Aug ’17

Replies 4

Boosts 0

Views 1.8k

Participants 3

Hi, ALL,

In Windows you can successfully create a Wizard dialog. It is basicallyu a dialog with a "Next", "Previous" and "Finish" buttons and multiple pages on which user can follow by pressing the buttons and filling out the forms.

On GTK+, there is a GtkAssistant, which is the same dialog.

Is there a same type of dialog inside OSX? Something like NSAssistant?

I know it should be there since if I want to install something on my Apple machine the installer is runnning this type of dialog.

Could someone point me to the documentation of such dialog?

Thank you in advance.

Boost

Answer 1

QuinceyMorris OP

Aug ’17

You can try searching on GitHub for a 3rd-party solution, but I don't believe there's any direct equivalent provided in Cocoa.

However, it's not very hard to roll your own. Basically, you use a window with a table view on the left, listing the steps, and 2-3 buttons across the bottom. The main part of the window is a "tabless" tab view (that is, a NSTabView that is set to not display its tab controls). You put each step of your workflow in a separate tab, and switch between tabs programmatically, according to which of the buttons is clicked.

(Normally, you don't put the Next/Prev/etc buttons themselves in the tabs, because they apply to all tabs.)

In addition, it's usual to have a background image view for the whole window.

It's not much code. Usually, the only hard parts are the design decisions you need to make, to get the window to look nice.

1

Answer 2

oneeyeman1 OP

Aug ’17

Hi, QuinceyMorris,

So all those installers dialogs are custom made?

That bad. ;-)

Anyway thank you for the explanation and suggestion.

I wiull see if I can find time to implement something like this.

0

Answer 3

KMT OP

Aug ’17

Guessing this is macOS.

Instead of taking your lead from Windows, and especially when asking about design, dialogs, etc., you may benefit from going thruApple's Human Interface Guidelines.

Some info here on a macOS (.dmg) installer that may help in your example:

h ttps://gist.github.com/jadeatucker/5382343

Good luck.

Ken

0

Answer 4

QuinceyMorris OP

Aug ’17

>> So all those installers dialogs are custom made?

There was a package installer system (well, is, but it's changed in the Mac App Store era, and I don't use it) where the structure of the wizard UI was provided by the installer app, but AFAIK it's otherwise custom made.

One difference from Windows is that installers are the exception on the Mac, not the rule like in Windows. A "normal" Mac app is installed by dragging it into the Applications folder, or downloaded from the app store.

0