Re: Colorful buttons of different shapes

Abhijeet Singh wrote:

> Hi,I am porting my Win32 application to Mac. I am new to Cocoa. In my Windows Win32 application I have a window in that there is a 3 X 8 matrix of 24 buttons. Buttons are labeled as 124. Each button has 3 states.Unused  Round shape green color (Default state)Selected  Square shape orange color (User selects a button)Used  Round Shape red color (User save the selection by clicking Save button)In Win32 application I use owner drawn buttons to draw button of different color and shape.I'd be glad if someone could suggest me which control should i use in Cocoa to achieve the same effect. Should I use NSMatrix of buttons? If yes than how can i set color and shape of buttons?

To follow up Christiaan's message, you would be well-served by at least giving a quick skim to the Human Interface Guidelines at <http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/XHIGIntro.html>.

You may have an established user base that you expect to begin using this on a Mac, but what you're describing is so far outside the typical Macintosh user experience that it will alienate a lot of potential users if this is an app for general release.

I'll give one strong recommendation right up front: Distinguishing the state of the button between "unused" and "saved" by red vs green is a very bad idea. Roughly 1 out of 20 people on the planet won't be able to judge reliably. (And, honestly, probably a larger ratio of the computer-using populace.)