Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

The Cocoa Difference

Here are some of the advantages Cocoa programs offer. It's worth reading—not to make you drool about a future when all Mac programs will fall into this category, but to help clear up any confusion you may have about why certain features seem to be present only occasionally.

Note

The following features appear in almost all Cocoa programs. That's not to say that you'll never see these features in Carbonized programs; the occasional Carbon program may offer one of these features or another. That's because programmers have to do quite a bit of work to bring them into Carbon applications—and almost none to include them in Cocoa ones.

The Font Panel

The Mac has always been the designer's preferred computer, and Mac OS X only strengthens its position. For one thing, Mac OS X comes with about 100 absolutely beautiful fonts that Apple licensed from commercial type companies—about $1,000 worth, according to Apple.

When you use a Carbon program, you usually access these fonts the same way as always: using a Font menu. But when you use a Cocoa program, you get the Font panel, which makes it far easier to organize, search, and use your font collection. Chapter 14 describes fonts, and the Font panel, in more detail.

Title Bar Tricks

You may remember from Chapter 2 that the title bar of every Finder window harbors a secret pop-up menu. When you ⌘-click it, you're shown a little folder ladder that delineates your current position in your folder hierarchy. You may also remember that ...