Parmanoir

I wondered how to paint "up there". It's easy once you know where to look :)

The Cocoa View hierarchy only talks about the hierarchy of controls in the content view, laid out in Interface Builder. That view hierarchy also extends up — the content view is hosted by a frame view which paints the window itself : background, title, shadow. That frame view is the parent of the window Close/Minimize/Maximize controls and of the toolbar show/hide control.

• Painting in the title bar retrieve the frame view with [[window contentView] superview] and reparent your control with [frameView addSubview:myControl]. Why do that ? I never felt the help button in JSCocoa's console was well placed. Putting it up there seems to make more sense. As the toolbar is minimal and non customizable, the show/hide toolbar button won't be missed.
• Painting in the toolbar retrieve the frame view and look for its child of class NSToolbarView. Reparent your control to it with addSubview. Why do that ? I wondered how iTunes paints its 'toolbar' controls. It looks like a toolbar on the right side, but the center HUD and left side play controls don't have labels. Why not use a toolbar to have the standard appearance and fill the missing parts with raw views ? Don't know if it's a good solution, but it works.

Sample Code Painting Up There.zip

With once again thanks to F-Script for all the spying.