C H A P T E R 6

Using Mac OS X Technologies

Bonjour

If you develop applications that need to communicate with other computers and processes on the Internet or a local area network, you should avoid making assumptions about the user’s network settings. Ensuring fast, efficient connections to other programs and computers is an important part of providing a good user experience.

Mac OS X supports a dynamically updating networking model. Because a user may change IP addresses many times during a single session, don’t save settings based on the IP address. Use Bonjour whenever a user might otherwise be required to set an IP address. Bonjour enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. The use of Bonjour can dramatically simplify network configuration for your users. For more information on Bonjour, see Bonjour Overview.

Colors

If your application deals with color, you may need a way for the user to enter color information. Mac OS X provides a standard Colors window for picking colors. Shown in Figure 6-3 this window lets the user enter color data using any of five different color models. You should use this window rather than create a custom interface for color selection.

For information on how to use this window in Cocoa applications, see Color Programming Topics for Cocoa; for Carbon programs, see Color Picker Manager Reference.

2008-06-09 | © 1992, 2001-2003, 2008 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved.