System menus

[Richard Gaskin]

James Spencer wrote:
> 
> On Feb 20, 2006, at 9:22 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> 
>> Klaus Major wrote:
>>> Buongiorno Paul,
>>>> Someone knows if the new Rev. 1.7 give some new chance to create a 
>>>> system
>>>> menu on Mac Os X (the menus visible by all applications, as
>>>> MenuCalendarClock, MenuMeters, iKey, etc.)?
>>> sorry, I'm afraid that is not possible with Rev :-/
>>
>> It may be worth noting that there is no sanctioned API for that, as 
>> Apple considers those menus to be exclusively for their own use:
>>
>>     Reserved for use by Apple, the right side of the menu bar
>>     may contain items that provide feedback on and access to
>>     certain hardware or network settings.
>> <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGMenus/chapter_16_section_4.html> 
>>
>> Third-party programs which make such menus for themselves do so by 
>> violating Apple's design mandate and effectively "hacking" the system.
> 
> As already said, Rev does not provide such facilities so this is getting 
> off-topic but the info here is not really correct.  While it is true 
> that there is no Apple sanctioned API for specifically "Menu Bar Extras" 
> as referred to in the HIG material quoted above, Cocoa does provide an 
> Apple sanctioned public API for the creation of "Status Items" 
> (NSStatusItem).  These are sort of weaker Menu Bar Extras (weaker in 
> that the underlying application needs to be running for them to appear 
> and you can't reorder them like you can Extras) but they are there 
> regardless of which app is in front and they have the advantage that 
> they can't bring the system down either.  While a public API, Apple 
> still discourages their use unless there is no alternative (say a Dock 
> menu), ostensibly to save menu bar real estate.  (I think it's also to 
> avoid creating the nightmare of a Windows system tray.)
> 
> The point is that not every third party program that is putting up one 
> of these menus is "hacking" the system.  I don't like these things so I 
> don't have many up there but I note that Kensington's MouseWorks uses 
> status items, not menu bar extras.  The only way I could tell (short of 
> looking at what processes are running) was to try to Cmd-drag the icon.

Thanks for the clarification, James.

As long as Apple's backtracked from their original position, maybe a 
Bugzilla request is in order?

It might also be good to have Dock menus as well -- is there a BZ 
request for that?

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
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