Windows of Perception

Daniel Jalkut explains why there are more windows, a lot more, in Mac OS X than you probably think. E.g. NSStatusItem icon menus are in fact drawn in a “window”:

I’m running Adium right now, with a single chat window open and activated. Adium is configured to show its NSStatusItem-based window in the menu bar. The above script, instead of returning the focused chat window, returns the sneaky little NSStatusItem window! So a user who relies on the functionality of AppleScript now has to know that “for Cocoa applications with NSStatusItems installed, the secret status item window is window 1.” That’s total BS. This window is broken.

This also explains why, if you click on a regular menu item title (like “File”) and then run your mouse across the menu, NSStatusItem menus won’t drop down, but NSMenuExtras will.

★ Monday, 20 February 2006