Sub views in HUD Panel

Question

I am working on OSX 10.10
I am facing a strange problem of sub view colors getting inverted for HUD Panel.
For example the button when set to default button looks right in Xib file but when executed the look and feel of button is modified by the HUD panel.

I am having a HUD Panel in my Xib file as follows

---

But when executed the button looses its default button status. It looks as follows

How do I maintain the look and feel of the button after execution. User is not able to judge which action will be the default action due to this look and feel

Answer 1

Try

_defaultButton.appearance = [NSAppearance appearanceNamed:NSAppearanceNameAqua];

Answer 2

Interface Builder follows a set of rules but these rules are not context-dependent. The context I'm talking about is "being displayed in a HUD Panel".

The rule applied in this case is "draw a blueish button in Interface Builder if the button is a default button" even if it's not always what happens (cf. what you're seeing in your second screenshot).

I don't know since which OS X version it's working like that, but now controls in HUD Panels are displayed with a different style (which does not have a special color for default button).

You can confirm this Interface Builder comportment by adding a simple NSTextField in your HUD Panel, it'll draw with a white background in Interface Builder but it will have a black background when running with a gray focus ring.

Interface Builder:

OS X 10.10:

I've never found a way to disable this special styling for controls in HUD Panel but several workarounds (the default button is still working correctly even if not having a special color).

The special styling only occurs when your HUD Panel have a title bar.

self.panel.styleMask = (NSHUDWindowMask | NSTitledWindowMask | NSUtilityWindowMask | NSNonactivatingPanelMask);

If you remove the title bar, it'll display without any special styling:

self.panel.styleMask = (NSHUDWindowMask | NSUtilityWindowMask | NSNonactivatingPanelMask);

At this point, you can implement and draw your own title bar in the panel and mimic the default one. I don't really like this approach because first it's a lot of work for a simple button and the custom styling of controls make them prettier and more easy to read in a HUD Panel.

Another solution was the 'VLC' way. They use HUD Panels but their controls don't have any special styling. They're using BGHUDAppKit which was released when Apple provided HUD Panel without any special controls to go with it. They use it to force the bluish style instead of the greyish one which are now used by default in HUD Panels. I didn't really like this approach too, I didn't want to add a library for a simple button, library not updated since 2011.

What I end up doing was drawing a custom button (with a simple subclass) for default buttons in a HUD Panel. This solution is quick and allow you to choose the color you want for default button in a HUD Panel (blueish may not be the best for a HUD Panel, your call).