Archive for November, 2009

The HUD windows that Apple supplied developers with is a semi-transparent black window, but what if you want it to be white? To create this, thanks to Matt Gemmell, it is going to be very easy. Here is a screenshot:

Lets get started. For this you are only going to need one thing, Matt Gemmell’s HUDWindow.

Here is how to get it.

1. Open Terminal
2. Type “cd Desktop/” (no speech quotes)
3. Type “wget http://mattgemmell.com/files/source/hudwindow.tgz” (no speech quotes (you can copy and paste this))

Now you should see a folder on your Desktop called “HUDWindow.” Open it, then open the Xcode project file.

Now go to line 127 of HUDWindow.m, you will see a the “[NSColor colorWithCalabratedWhite...] code. Delete that entire line and replace it with:
[[NSColor colorWithCalibratedRed:5.0 green:150.0 blue:15.0 alpha:0.5] set];

Now go to line 157 of HUDWindow.m and you will see this line:
NSColor *titlebarColor = [NSColor colorWithCalibratedWhite....

Delete that line and replace it with:
NSColor *titlebarColor = [NSColor colorWithCalibratedRed:5.0 green:150.0 blue:15.0 alpha:alpha];

Now we have to change the color of the text on the window to black so you read the text.
So, go to line 169 of HUDWindow.m and change:
[NSColor whiteColor]
To:
[NSColor blackColor]

This will change the Title Bar color to black. Now we need to change the color of the text on the window.
Now we need to go to line 36 of AppController.m and change
[textField setTextColor:[NSColor whiteColor]];
To:
[textField setTextColor:[NSColor blackColor]];

And we are done, you now have a white HUDWindow. Be sure to swing by http://mattgemmell.com/.

~Jeremy