Noodlings

My graphic designer is working on a menu bar icon for the next version of Hazel. The problem is that it’s hard to visualize them in situ. To aid my designer in this regard, I threw together a quick little proggie. It’s just a simple program that has a menu bar icon. It provides a controls where you can edit NSStatusItem settings as well as image wells into which you can drag icons. The status item updates so you can see your icons in their natural habitat.

I also added an image well where you can test out app icons to see how they look in the dock.

Source (what very little there is) and binary included. MIT license. Valentine’s Day has passed but it’s never too late to show your designer a little love.

Download: Status Item Tester

Are you working on some sort of calendaring app? Need an icon?

Icon designer Fernando Lins has got an icon for you. The original client abandoned it but their loss is your gain.

Every year, hundreds of icons go homeless. We hope that in this season of giving, you can find it in your heart to adopt this icon and give it a home for the holidays.

[IMPORTANT ADDENDUM: I have received requests to be even more emphatic in discouraging use of these icons. Using undocumented API does create a legacy that makes it hard for the Apple engineers to move forward with the API. So, in addition to the apocalyptic vision presented in the original post below, I, along with my cohorts, will start calling you "stinkypants" so, DO NOT USE THESE IMAGES IN A SHIPPING APP. I leave this article here out of archaeological interest but I am willing to remove it for the greater good of the Republic.]

To keep with the icon theme, let’s look into another source of icons.

Under Cocoa, you can also get access to certain system images via NSImage’s +imageNamed: method. Give it a string and it gives you an image registered with that name. For system images, the catch is that only a handful of those names are documented. Here are the ones I could find in the docs:

• NSAscendingSortIndicator
• NSDescendingSortIndicator
• NSApplicationIcon
• DRBurnIcon
• DREraseIcon

The docs also state that +imageNamed: searches the Appkit Framework. Digging around, I’ve come up with the following:

• NSDefaultApplicationIcon
• NSDeadKeyMenuImage
• NSGrayResizeCorner
• NSHelpCursor
• NSMysteryDocument
• NSMultipleFiles
• NSOpacitySlider
• NSUtilityInactivePattern
• NSUtilityKeyPattern
• SpellingDot
• NSTriangleNormalRight
• NSTrianglePressedRight
• NSTriangleNormalDown
• NSTrianglePressedDown

As with the Icon Manager icons, some of these are not currently used (old NeXTies should find the NSMutipleFiles image familiar). While most of these are prefixed with “NS” making them seem official, they are not documented explicitly, only indirectly via the allusion to images in the Appkit Framework.

It’s unclear whether one can count these images sticking around from release to release but my guess “no”. Usage of these images may result in plagues of locusts (in the form of people in three-piece suits with “Esquire” tacked to the end of their names) descending upon your home as it is simultaneously invaded by fire-breathing hippos who proceed to trample your worldly possessions and imbue your commemorative plate collection with a strange odor making them unsuitable for sale on Ebay, the worst of it being that your insurance will not cover any of it. Or maybe all that happens is that milk starts tasting funny. Try it out and let me know.

But even if you don’t use them in a shipping app, they can be useful as a temporary stand-in until you or a graphic artist makes a knock-off.

You can preview these images in InterfaceBuilder by setting them on a control (just type in the name). At least on my machine, IB shows a broken image when you enter any of the above but cutting and pasting the control seems to make the image appear. Maybe at some point I’ll add these to the System Icon Viewer.

By the way, if anyone knows of any named images that I missed, send them my way.

Enjoy.

When I saw this post, I mentioned to Daniel Jalkut that I had done the same thing that he did (which was to create an NSImage category to access Carbon’s Icon Manager’s icons). After his obligatory insistence that I start a blog, I sent him a little program I had thrown together to preview the icons.

Since he referenced it in his post, I’ve made it available. It’s not pretty as it was just slapped together but it’s functional. It does show that if you are using Cocoa, the category is pretty much unnecessary as NSWorkspace seems to return the same icons, with a few exceptions. Of course, if the icon you want is one of those exceptions, you can look and decide for yourself.

System Icon Viewer source