Re: Creating Menu Bar Extras?

FROM : daniel
DATE : Sat Apr 09 20:45:46 2005

Yeah, that's a drawback to the menu bar items.  I consider there to be
more drawbacks to the dock menu, though:

1. No way to convey dynamic UI feedback to users who run with the dock
hidden.
2. No way to customize the format of the menu (graphics or special
formatting).
3. No way to appear in the dock as an LSUIElement.
4. No way to provide keyboard access to the menu.

Overall, the NSStatusItem API provides so much more flexibility that
it's not reasonable to suggest overloading the dock menu as an
alternative for what many NSStatusItems are trying to accomplish.

Daniel

On Apr 9, 2005, at 11:31 AM, Tom Bradford wrote:

> Overload the Dock icon's menu instead.  While Menu Extras may seem
> 'neat-o', most of the time, my XCode menu overlaps the Menu Extras,
> which makes them essentially useless for people trying to access them
> from Apps with large menus (and who are using 12" powerbooks).