Cocoa - NSWindow animation when displayed?

Question

How would I add some sort of CoreAnimation effect when showing a simple nswindow?

Thanks

Answer 1

I've done an animation like you describe before. However, it wasn't an easy task. Since your animation extends outside the bounds of the window itself, you'll need to render the animation in an oversized, transparent window. When the animation completes, you can order in the real window and remove the transparent one.

You'll need an image of the window to use as the content of your animation, so what I would do is order the window in (and probably make it the key window, too, so that it looks focused), but put it well off-screen so the user doesn't see it. Then use CGWindowListCreateImage to grab a screenshot of the window. Now you'll have what you need to create an animation.

After the animation completes, just order the real window over top of the transparent one, then remove the transparent window. Getting the math right so that the image of the window in the animation and the real window is a bit tricky, but it's definitely doable.