Book Image

Mac Application Development by Example: Beginner's Guide

By : Robert Wiebe
Book Image

Mac Application Development by Example: Beginner's Guide

By: Robert Wiebe

Overview of this book

It's never been more important to have the ability to develop an App for Mac OS X. Whether it's a System Preference, a business app that accesses information in the Cloud, or an application that uses multi-touch or uses a camera, you will have a solid foundation in app development to get the job done.Mac Application Development by Example takes you through all the aspects of using the Xcode development tool to produce complete working apps that cover a broad range of topics. This comprehensive book on developing applications covers everything a beginner needs to know and demonstrates the concepts using examples that take advantage of some of the most interesting hardware and software features available.You will discover the fundamental aspects of OS X development while investigating innovative platform features to create a final product which take advantage of the unique aspects of OS X.Learn how to use Xcode tools to create and share Mac OS X apps. Explore numerous OS X features including iCloud, multi-touch trackpad, and the iSight camera.This book provides you with an illustrated and annotated guide to bring your idea to life using fundamental concepts that work on Mac.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Mac Application Development by Example Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding preference panes


Typically, when we write an App for Mac OS X, we expect it to be something that is placed in the Applications folder that the user double-clicks to launch and use. But that is not the only kind of App that we can develop.

We can also develop a plugin that rather than being installed in the Applications folder and double-clicked, is installed in the PreferencePanes folder and loaded by the System Preferences when the user clicks on its icon in the System Preferences.

This is commonly referred to as a plug-in because there is a special set of rules that the App must follow in order to interact with the preferences framework.

Note

While we are going to build a preference pane and install it in the System Preferences it is also possible to use preference panes in an Apps preferences and provide an Apps preference panel that is similar in style to the System Preferences.

When our preference pane is installed, it will appear in the Other section of the System Preferences...