Re: [Q] NSOpenPanel / NSSavePanel customization

FROM : glenn andreas
DATE : Wed Jun 21 18:21:46 2006

On Jun 21, 2006, at 10:58 AM, JongAm Park wrote:

> However, sometimes, if there are so many files in a directory, it 
> is inconvenient to search files with proper extensions you want.
> So, in that case, user can filter out files with extensions you 
> don't want. (Also, although you can set the file types passed to 
> the NSOpenPanel, instead of hiding other files, it just gray out 
> files that are not covered by the file types passed. Wouldn't it be 
> nicer to hide them? Yeah.. sometimes it is better to display them 
> in gray text, but.. )
>


There is no support to _remove_ an item from the open panel, at best 
you can disable it (to indicate that it can't be opened), because 
that's how the OS X UI is defined for picking files.

> This UI is also clean. Please take a look at the enclosed screenshot.
> It is a kind of UI used by many Windows users and I don't think it 
> is complicated.
>


But OS X isn't Windows, and OS X users are use to seeing the entire 
list of files in a folder, with those not being openable disabled. 
If the users only want to find ".h" files, they can already do that 
by typing in ".h" into the Spotlight field at the top right of the 
dialog.

So given that there is no documented/supported way to remove files 
from the list, your popup menu would only change the state of some of 
the item from enabled to disabled, with the only effect being  that 
the user would now see his file and have to keep changing the popup 
to be able to select it (and that there already is a mechanism in 
place to perform the task you're attempting, even if you did find a 
way to remove items from the list, you'd just be duplicating existing 
functionality).

If you want your product to be successful, you want to follow the UI 
standards for the platform it is on, and one of those for OS X is 
that open panels shouldn't have "filter" popups whose only purpose is 
to alter what files can be picked (it might make sense if you had 
something that altered _how_ the file was opened - for example, how 
to treat line endings or file encodings).


Glenn Andreas                      <email_removed>
  <http://www.gandreas.com/> wicked fun!
Widgetarium | the quickest path to widgets