NSView Frame Reverting After Being Set Programmatically

Question 1

So I managed to stop the resizing of the views by subclassing them and overriding -resizeWithOldSuperviewSize: to just do nothing, like this:

- (void)resizeWithOldSuperviewSize:(NSSize)oldSize {};

Question 2

An alternative to replacing the content of resizeWithOldSuperviewSize: is to inform the auto layout system that you don't want your NSView to be resized. This will have the effect of keeping your NSView at the origin that you specified programmatically thereby keeping your override of the interface builder intact. You do this by:

[<id> setAutoresizingMask:NSViewNotSizable];
[<id> setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:YES];

where <id> would be the instance of your NSView, i.e. self.button. The first line states that the view is not sizable, while the second states that the mask should be considered a constraint by the auto layout system. Your revised AppDelegate.m would then be:

#import "AppDelegate.h"

@implementation AppDelegate

- (void)awakeFromNib{
    [self.button setAutoresizingMask:NSViewNotSizable];
    [self.button setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:YES];
    [self.button setFrame:NSMakeRect(50, 10, 100, 100)];
}

@end

Update: If you use this method with an NSView that you plan to set hidden, the auto layout system will still take the frame of the hidden NSView into account when the frame's superview/window is resized. This means that if the hidden NSView would be outside the visible area of the superview after resize, the auto layout system will prevent the superview from resizing properly and instead will force the superview frame to enclose the hidden NSView.

One naïve solution to this problem is to set the width and height of the NSView to zero after setting hidden:YES and restoring the width and height before setting hidden:NO. For example, at some point in your code using your NSView self.button:

...
[self.button setHidden:YES];
[self.button setFrameSize:NSZeroSize];
...

and later:

...
[self.button setFrameSize:NSMakeSize(160, 90)];
[self.button setHidden:NO];
...

However, if you have width/height auto layout constraints set on the NSView (either programmatically or through Interface Builder), these changes may throw warnings like:

Unable to simultaneously satisfy constraints:
(
    "<NSLayoutConstraint:0x608000082990 H:[NSButton:0x6080001200a0(100)]>",
    "<NSAutoresizingMaskLayoutConstraint:0x60800008bae0 h=--& v=--& H:[NSButton:0x6080001200a0(0)]>"
)

Will attempt to recover by breaking constraint 
<NSLayoutConstraint:0x608000082990 H:[NSButton:0x6080001200a0(100)]>

You can either ignore these warnings, reduce the constraints priority to a low number, change the constraint from = to ≤, or alternately you can simply setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:NO before hiding the NSView, and setting it to YES prior to unhiding the NSView:

...
[self.button setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:NO];
[self.button setHidden:YES];
...

And when we unhide the NSView:

...
[self.button setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:YES];
[self.button setHidden:NO];
...

You can also automate this by subclassing the NSView and overriding setHidden: (note the !):

- (void)setHidden:(BOOL)hidden {
    [self setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:!hidden];
    [super setHidden:hidden];
}

You can then simply call [self.button setHidden:YES]; or [self.button setHidden:NO]; and the overridden method will take care of everything.

Question 3

From awakeFromNib description:

Because the order in which objects are instantiated from an archive is not guaranteed, your initialization methods should not send messages to other objects in the hierarchy. Messages to other objects can be sent safely from within an awakeFromNib method. Typically, you implement awakeFromNib for objects that require additional set up that cannot be done at design time. For example, you might use this method to customize the default configuration of any controls to match user preferences or the values in other controls. You might also use it to restore individual controls to some previous state of your application.

I am not 100% sure but I am strongly suggest to move

[self.button setFrame:NSMakeRect(50, 10, 100, 100)];

to

- (void)viewDidLoad

method. Also you should not forget to call super's methods - in some cases it could be critical. So your final code should look like this:

@implementation AppDelegate

- (void)awakeFromNib{
    [super awakeFromNib];
    ... non GUI initialization
}

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    [self.button setFrame:NSMakeRect(50, 10, 100, 100)];
}

@end

UPDATE: Thanks for call stuck. It seems that your view is autoresized. You should check autoresizingMask and auto-layout constraints