CODEWITHSUNDEEP
objective-cmacososx-mountain-lion
El Tomato
El Tomato

Reputation: 6707

Disabling Window Behind

These days, I develop iPad applications. Since I've run out of subjects to work on, I'm working on a simple OS X application to see how far I can go.

Anyway, what I want to do is show a Preferences window (PrefWindowController). It has a separate xib (PrefWindowController.xib) from MainMenu.xib. When it appears, I want the main window to go behind it. The following is what I have.

// AppDelegate.m
- (void)preferencesClicked:(id)sender {
    if (!preferencesWindow) {
        preferencesWindow = [[PrefWindowController alloc] initWithWindowNibName:@"PrefWindowController"];
    }
    [preferencesWindow showWindow:self];
}

// PrefWindowController.m
- (void)windowDidLoad {
    [super windowDidLoad];

    [NSApp runModalForWindow:self.window];
    NSLog(@"Hello!?");
}

- (IBAction)closeClicked:(id)sender {

    [NSApp stopModal];
    [self close];   
}

So I've learnt that I can use runModalForWindow to put the current window on top of the main window. The problem that I have is that this preferences window will reopen when I click on the close button (closeClicked). If I click on it again, it will close. If I open Preferences and click on the same button, it won't reopen. An interesting thing is that the application won't read NSLog(@"Hello!?") when the Preferences window first opens. It does when I clicked on the close button. Do you know what I'm doing wrong?

Thank you for your help.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 144

Answers (1)

Steve Waddicor
Steve Waddicor

Reputation: 2217

Modal doesn't mean display on top. Modal means stop the user interacting with anything else other than this. It does this by creating a new run loop, which means that anything after runModelForWindow won't happen till after the modal window is closed. Exactly what you are seeing with the NSLog.

You probably don't want to use a modal window for preferences. The convention for OSX is that the main app window stays active when a preferences window is open.

If you just want to bring the window to the front, and don't care if the user later clicks on the main window to bring it to the front, then use -makeKeyAndOrderFront on the window you have. If on the other hand you want this preferences window to always be in front, then make it an NSPanel rather than an NSWindow.

Upvotes: 1

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