I’m working on an application now that uses a custom document format. Since my code manipulates this format and spits it back out to disk, I find myself frequently examining the resulting documents using Peter Ammon’s excellent Hex Fiend to examine the resulting files, and make sure the content is still format-compliant. But while I’m […]

Implementing reordering table views is something of a first-time obstacle in Cocoa. The basic gist is you take responsibility for dragging from and to the table view in question, and thereby implicitly support drag reordering. This technique is demonstrated by Apple’s DragNDropOutlineView example. Faced with the desire to implement such functionality in a bindings-oriented application […]

You’re a good developer. You’ve tackled lots of tough problems they’ve thrown your way. You are respected by your peers. You’ve done a great job with your life! And then there’s that nagging in the back of your head. You can’t kill the guilt of that glaring omission – the horror of horrors. The place […]

Cocoa contains an awesome but sort of half-baked infrastructure for “autosaving” UI configurations for the user. Many of the common UI elements, such as windows, table views, and toolbars possess the ability to write out their configuration to the app’s preferences so they can be automatically restored the next time the app is launched. When […]