How to implement an iTunes like interface?

Question

After exploring a multi window implementation for my core data Cocoa app, I've decided to abandon that design and switch over to a design like you see with iTunes and iPhote. That is a split window with a navigation area on the left and a content pane on the right.

I was pondering with the idea to tackle this as follows:

• Create a main window with a NSSplitView on it.
• Have different NIB's with views and separate controllers for each view. Each view corresponds to an option displayed in the left hand pane (so my app is about "Events" and "Locations", so there would be an EventView and a LocationView).
• Load each view in the right pane of the split view as the user navigates the options in the left pane by instantiating the corresponding controller which in turn loads the NIB and puts its view in the right side pane.

My question is whether that is a feasible design or am I completely on the wrong track here and are there better ways of doing this? I've come across this question but that's going more towards a Finder-like implementation with cascaded hierarchies, which is not what I'm looking for.

Answer 1

Your design is feasible. You can also refer iTunes-ifying a Core Data App.