Toolbars with small buttons

General
1

Does anyone do a control that presents a toolbar like this:

as opposed to these big chunky icons like this?

Ideally I would still like to use colored icons - the boring ‘everything must be grey’ thing gets me down, but Mojave has messed everything up with dark mode, and for that (and a number of other reasons) I think its time for me to change my UI around.

Trouble is, Windows users might expect Ribbon toolbar, and Mac users might expect the Apple mail thing above.
Cross platform builds with toolbars are a problem.

2

There is an example in the MBS plugins for this type of toolbar. But it was so convoluted that I never got it to work.

4

I was just looking into to NSToolbar for another non Xojo related project…
It requires the abilitiy to implement NSToolbarGroups and/or inserting Segmented Controls
I’m doubting it can be done with simple declares… and you need to activate the “.allowsUserCustomization”

Another interesting thing… by Default Apple applies a Unified toolbar, but Xojo doesn’t seem to (if you want I have the declares to do it)

5

The Retina Kit includes code to move controls into Toolbar buttons (which is how you build an interface like this) http://ohanaware.com/retinakit/

6

If you need the customer to be able to customise the toolbar, then use the MBS plugins. It is pretty straight forward to do - no rocket science.
If no customising is needed, the best way is the RetinaKit from Sam.

But I do agree with Dave, the Xojo toolbar is the old classic way and is to be avoided if you need a modern macOS app.

7

macoslib has an implementation for the NSToolbar using purely declares and an example on how to use it, it’s fairly simple to add custom controls once it is set up.

8

Search for the CustomNSToolbarMBS project within the MBS plugins example folder

9

https://graffitisuite.com/features/desktop-edition/?

10

Thanks Julia.
Thats what I use now.
It doesn’t ‘do’ this.

(Also, my version of the code doesn’t like Mojave. Perhaps the current version does, but they don’t do a demo version, there is no upgrade path, and the current price is huge.
I want to switch away from KillerToolbar)

11

Timely, as I’m doing a toolbar right now and was considering graffiti, but yeah, it’s a lot of money if all you need is the toolbar and you don’t really need user configurability. Guess I’ll muddle through with the Xojo one, thanks.

12

And as always; one of you who needs it, please make a FR we can upvote :wink: