I didn’t want to half-implement the new tab feature in Slider – I want people to have almost as much control as if they were coding the site by hand.

This has meant I’ve had to rethink Slider’s UI many times, and I’ve had (re: couldn’t face shipping without) to implement many small features that I feel are required, from a usability standpoint.

When I decided that the user may choose to place tabs in 12 different positions, I needed to consider how this would effect the arrows and sliding animations. I came to the conclusion that if the user elects to place the tabs on the top or bottom, the arrows will be on the left and right, with the animation going right/left. If the user chooses to place tabs on the left or right, the arrows will be positioned on the top and bottom, with the animation going up/down.

Pictures make it easier:

As soon as I implemented this I realised how much of a pain it would be to copy out the arrow images, rotate them in an external program, then copy them back in. So I put some buttons next to the arrow image wells that allow the user to rotate the arrows within Slider itself.

Here is the code I used to rotate the images (thanks to Jerry Krinock and Steve Christensen and for posting this solution to the Cocoa-dev list):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66

#import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>
 
@interface NSImage (Transform)
 
 
/*!
 @brief    Rotates an image around its center by a given
 angle in degrees and returns the new image.
 
 @details  The width and height of the returned image are,
 respectively, the height and width of the receiver.
 
 I have not yet tested this with a non-square image.
 
authors: Jerry Krinock and Steve Christensen
 */
- (NSImage*)imageRotatedByDegrees:(CGFloat)degrees ;
 
@end
 
#import "NSImage+Transform.h"
 
@implementation NSImage (Transform)
 
 
- (NSImage*)imageRotatedByDegrees:(CGFloat)degrees {
 
	// calculate the bounds for the rotated image
    NSRect imageBounds = {NSZeroPoint, [self size]};
 
	NSBezierPath* boundsPath = [NSBezierPath bezierPathWithRect:imageBounds];
 
    NSAffineTransform* transform = [NSAffineTransform transform];
 
    [transform rotateByDegrees:degrees];
    [boundsPath transformUsingAffineTransform:transform];
 
    NSRect rotatedBounds = {NSZeroPoint, [boundsPath bounds].size};
 
	NSImage* rotatedImage = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:rotatedBounds.size];
 
    // center the image within the rotated bounds
 
	imageBounds.origin.x = NSMidX(rotatedBounds) - (NSWidth (imageBounds) / 2); imageBounds.origin.y = NSMidY(rotatedBounds) - (NSHeight (imageBounds) / 2);
 
    // set up the rotation transform
    transform = [NSAffineTransform transform];
 
	[transform translateXBy:+(NSWidth(rotatedBounds) / 2) yBy:+ (NSHeight(rotatedBounds) / 2)];
 
    [transform rotateByDegrees:degrees];
 
	[transform translateXBy:-(NSWidth(rotatedBounds) / 2) yBy:- (NSHeight(rotatedBounds) / 2)];
 
    // draw the original image, rotated, into the new image
    [rotatedImage lockFocus];
    [transform concat];
 
	[self drawInRect:imageBounds fromRect:NSZeroRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0] ;
 
    [rotatedImage unlockFocus];
 
    return [rotatedImage autorelease];	
 
}
@end

I had to change (from/to):

NSImage* rotatedImage = [[[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:rotatedBounds.size] autorelease];

 NSImage* rotatedImage = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:rotatedBounds.size];

return rotatedImage;

return [rotatedImage autorelease];

[transform set];

[transform concat];

For it to work flawlessly with Slider.

Thanks guys!

Scroll to top

Related posts:

1. Tile an NSImage Within an NSBezierPath Scroll to comments Another snippet I had to write during the great Slider rebuild. I needed to be able to take an NSImage supplied by the user and tile it within an NSBezierPath defined by more user-set values. The below example uses a rounded rectangle. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 NSBitmapImageRep...
2. Fill a Path With A Scaled Image, Ignoring Image Proportions Scroll to comments While continuing to rebuild Slider’s background image features, I was forced to rewrite the code that scales an image up/down to Slider’s portal size, ignoring the image’s original proportions. The image also had to be painted within a path, as Slider may have differently shaped corners compared to the image to be [...]...
3. The Mutations of Slider’s Tab Option Pane Scroll to comments During the past week, I’ve been working on Slider’s new Tab option pane. I took screen shots before making changes to the layout. Here they are: I hope I’m not tempted to change things around again… I really need to get the backend going now! Like this post? Move it on along with: Email | [...]...
4. How to Prevent Noisy NSBitmapImageReps Scroll to comments Images generated for Slider’s background and tabs contained a lot of noise – random ugly pixels throughout the images. I was unsure why this was happening, so I asked the Cocoa-Dev mailing list. Rob Keniger kindly replied with the following solution: “An NSBitmapImageRep is not guaranteed to be empty when you create it and in [...]...
5. Slider Update – Tab Feature Coming Together Scroll to comments As I finally reached a programming goal I had set – the tab hover javascript was working fairly well – I realised that users would want the option of positioning the tabs in the middle or corners of Slider’s four sides. Initially I had assumed it would be OK for users to have [...]...

Tags: Cocoa, NSImage, Objective C, Snippet