getmixxd / mrsubtlebutton

A subtle gradient button, derived from NSView.

##MRSubtleButton A subtle gradient button, derived from NSView. No images involved.

Example buttons with custom colours:

##Usage MRSubtleButton can be integrated into an existing project using CocoaPods. Simply add the necessary dependency to your Podfile as follows:

platform :osx, '10.7'
pod 'MRSubtleButton'
...

Run pod install to install.

Next, drag a custom view from the object library in Xcode into your UI, and change its class to MRSubtleButton.

Create an outlet for the button and implement the <MRSubtleButtonDelegate> protocol in your controller with the following method (don't forget to #import <MRSubtleButton.h> in your controller):

- (void)MRSubtleButtonEvent:(NSEvent *)event with:(id)sender;

Finally, set the button's delegate to your controller object: [button setDelegate:self] and give the button a title: [button setTitle:@"Hello World!"].

If you have more than one button with the same delegate you can determine which button was pressed by inspecting its title:

- (void)MRSubtleButtonEvent:(NSEvent *)event with:(id)sender
{
  // assuming sender is of class MRSubtleButton
  if ([[sender title] isEqualToString:@"Hello World!"])
  {
    // your button event implementation
  }
}

##Custom colours and fonts Each button's gradient colour and font attributes (both colour and size) are adjustable. Setting the button's colour is as easy as specifying a start and end colour for the gradient (note that the gradient starts at the bottom of the button):

NSColor *start = [NSColor colorWithCalibratedRed:205.0f/255.0f green:183.0f/255.0f blue:158.0f/255.0f alpha:1.0f];
NSColor *end = [NSColor colorWithCalibratedRed:255.0f/255.0f green:239.0f/255.0f blue:213.0f/255.0f alpha:1.0f];

[[self button] setGradientWithStartColor:start endColor:end];

A subtle gradient works best, with an end colour that is just a few shades lighter than the start colour. To reset a button to the default light grey gradient use: [button resetGradient].

Adjusting a button's font attributes is just as easy:

NSFont *buttonFont = [NSFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica" size:18.0f];
NSColor *buttonFontColor = [NSColor colorWithCalibratedRed:139.0f/255.0f green:136.0f/255.0f blue:120.0f/255.0f alpha:1.0f]; 
    
[[self button] setFontAttributesWithFont:buttonFont color:buttonFontColor];

[[self button] setTitle:@"Customised button"];

An example using the preceding code:

##Caveats Please note that the source code uses ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) and has only been tested against 10.7 and 10.8 deployment targets.

##License MRSubtleButton is provided under the terms of the MIT License.

##Comments or suggestions? Email me at [email protected] with bugs, feature requests or general comments and follow @marcransome for updates.