objective-cmacoscocoahig

What Cocoa control(s) are sidebar controls as per the human interface guidelines?

The Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) outline certain things you should adhere to for sidebar icons and the reason given is:

OS X applies various effects to sidebar icons

First Question I don't see a standard out-the-box sidebar control that OS X would be applying these effects to. Which controls would these be?

Second Question

HIG also recommend:

Create your icons in three sizes: 16 x 16, 18 x 18, and 32 x 32 pixels (if using PDF).

Why would you need to replicate these three sizes if you are providing vector artwork (pdf) to the application?

[I could perhaps understand if the sizes were not all just pure scalings of the original square 16x16 but given that they are all symmetric to one another...]

Solution

  • The reference to sidebar controls is a reference to the earlier chapter Windows: Source Lists (Sidebars):

    A source list (also called a sidebar) is an area of a window, usually set off by a movable splitter, that lets users navigate or select objects in an app. … Typically, users select an object in the source list and then act upon that object in the main part of the window.

    API Note

    By default, a source list is translucent when you use an NSOutlineView or NSTableView object and set the highlight style to NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleSourceList.

    Regarding the icon sizes, I'm pretty sure that's just a typo. They dropped the word "not", as in "16 x 16, 18 x 18, and 32 x 32 pixels (if not using PDF)". The subsequent paragraph makes that clear:

    If you create your sidebar icons in PDF format, OS X automatically scales your icon for high-resolution displays, so you don't need to provide high-resolution versions. However, if you use PNG format for your icons, you need to supply the following resources: 16x16, 16x16@2x, 18x18, 18x18@2x, 32x32, and 32x32@2x.