Just starting with a simple Cocoa app, how long shoudl this take?

Hi folks,

I come from a web developer background, having worked in PHP / MySQL / JavaScript for the last 8 years or so. I have an idea for what I think should be a simple Mac app, but because I would be starting from scratch, I'd like an idea of what kind of learning curve is ahead. So, if I could get some ideas from veterans about how long you think it would take to get up to speed enough to execute something like this - assuming I'm reasonably competent - that would be awesome.

The idea is cursor switching app. There's just one configuration screen that allows you to upload an image and use it as your cursor, switching it on and off with a hotkey. There are 5 or so slots for different images you can use, along with unique hotkeys.

Thanks!
Chris

I'd look for something that does this. One company had such a product but didn't seem to come out with replacement for 10.6. They were using a haxie which are no longer supported in 10.6 and beyond. Perhaps this link will lead somewhere.


Assuming it is possible to replace the system cursor, here are some quick thoughts...

I think a very experienced Cocoa programmer could hack something solid together in a day or two. Starting from complete scratch with Cocoa I think it would take at least a couple of weeks because you have so much to learn.

It sounds easy enough, although one Stackoverflow discussion suggested full screen mode may be tricky. Here are two leads for using the NSCursor class; 1, 2.

You might use NSFileManager to fetch the images from the file system. There are other frameworks for accessing web sources. You may also involve ImageIO and the CGImage. You'll likely have to learn how to transform the size of your imported images, which isn't difficult.

Although I know you can create hotkeys, I'm not sure how to do it as a background app. There are apps that do it. Of course you'd want to watch out that you don't steal from other apps, especially the currently active app or the current keyboard active area.

Another thing to be concerned about is passing keys further up the responder chain. When a key is pressed, it is first passed to the active keyboard input, then the front most app, then further on until something claims it. If your app isn't able to use the key, it must forward it. How that all happens is more difficult to explain. That will be a part of your learning curve. I'm aware of two podcasts that discussed the NSResponder chain.

Thank you!

Thank you so much, xstep, this was awesome information!

This gives me a lot of threads to follow if I decide to hack at this myself. I've been able to get the general effect I want by combining a product called PinPoint which uses Quartz templates to generate the overlay image, with another free app called Cursorcerer to hide the cursor. I can set the hotkey to be the same in both apps, and hack one of the Quartz templates to use my own image and get something that works, but is pretty quirky. For example, whenever the cursor would change, the cursor re-appears. I would also love to be able to use different images for different hotkeys, but with this setup I can only use one.

I use this for screencasting, and it's really handy when its working. I like it so much that I've put out requests on ELance and Guru.com to see if I can get a bid on doing the app I'm envisioning, but I haven't gotten any bites. I've contacted PinPoint, but they're not interested since the cursor hiding would be too hackish.

Would you have any suggestions as to where I might be able to hook up with a developer that would be able to put something like this together besides ELance and Guru.com? I don't have a ton of resources to throw at it currently, but would love to get an idea of what I'd need to put together to get it done.

Thanks again for the great info, I really appreciate it!

Cheers!
Chris

stompeers said:

Thank you so much, xstep, this was awesome information!

Would you have any suggestions as to where I might be able to hook up with a developer that would be able to put something like this together besides ELance and Guru.com? I don't have a ton of resources to throw at it currently, but would love to get an idea of what I'd need to put together to get it done.

Click to expand...

You're welcome.

I'm not really in the know of developer contact sites. I probably should be. That is the right tact I think though. Perhaps some enterprising developer will be interested enough to do one for a low price. You never know.

I can appreciate why you would like to hide the cursor for a screen capture. I wonder if Screen flow has the ability to hide it when you do the edit.

Good luck.

Thanks again, I'll keep working on this. Screeflow does indeed have the ability to change and hide the mouse cursor in the editing phase, which I did for 12 hours of video, but now I'm wanting to do it live to speed things up.

Again, thanks again for all the great info!

Cheers!
Chris