Personalizing NSTableView in three ways

Question

I'd like to use an NSTableView for displaying a list of disks to the user and I think it would be better to display them a bit differently than the normal NSTableView does. Here is an image as example:

The features I'd like are these:

1. Thicker rows (just like this one)
2. The nice gradient used for selection, instead of the normal colors
3. One image on the left (the drive's icon) and the text on the right (it's name), but using only one column (with a name like "Available Disks")

I am specially reluctant to do the third as I think it will envolve doing my own cell subclass and drawing the text and image myself, which I have NO clue how to do :(

The other ones I reckon they will not be that difficult once someone points me in the right direction...

PS: The image is from Xcode 4 in the preferences.

Answer 1

Alright! I have found how all these three things can be done:

1. You can change the row thickness in IB
2. That nice gradient you can also be done in IB by changing "Highlight" to "Source List" instead of "Regular"

3. Now for the third I did something a wee bit differently than I said I wanted:

   • In IB I checked "Headers" off, so using two columns is possible without the user knowing it
   • The first column I put an image cell, while on the second I put a text cell
   • Then, because I had changed the height of the rows, I noticed NSTextViewCell doesn't vertically align the text, nor does it have options for that, which means I ended up having a NSTextViewCell subclass for centering the text. Here it is:

`

@interface ACTCenteredTextFieldCell : NSTextFieldCell
{

}

@end

@implementation ACTCenteredTextFieldCell

- (NSRect)titleRectForBounds: (NSRect)theRect {
    NSRect titleFrame = [super titleRectForBounds: theRect];
    NSSize titleSize = [[self attributedStringValue] size];

    titleFrame.origin.y = theRect.origin.y + (theRect.size.height - titleSize.height) / 2.0;

    return titleFrame;
}

- (void)drawInteriorWithFrame: (NSRect)cellFrame inView: (NSView*)controlView {
    NSRect titleRect = [self titleRectForBounds: cellFrame];

    [[self attributedStringValue] drawInRect: titleRect];
}
@end

There! Worked fine for me so far!

Answer 2

You could use an NSCollectionView, and design a custom NSView that would be used for your rows, although see this question and answers for some cavets with XCode 4.