Mac OS X is All About the Poof!
Let's face it: We all use Mac OS X because of that awesome little poof that appears when we drag stuff out of the toolbar or the Dock. We want poofs!
The Code
The poof is actually built-in to the Mac OS X Application Kit framework that is an integral part of Cocoa, one of the two major application APIs Apple provides for developers (the other being Carbon which REALbasic is built on top of). The setup code to use Cocoa in a REALbasic app is a discussion in its own right, so I'll skip all that and refer you to Charles Yeomans' wonderful e-book "I Declare: Calling External Functions in REALbasic". It should be noted that without Charles' book or his help, you wouldn't be reading this right now.
Alright, now setup code aside, the code is very simple. There's a function in the AppKit framework called "NSShowAnimationEffect" which is used to display an animation, one of them being a poof (no others are implemented). Just pass it the screen location (with 0, 0 being the bottom left), the type of effect, ignore the other stuff, and away you go!
Sub ShowPoofAtPoint(x as Integer, y as Integer)
Const NSAnimationEffectPoof = 10
Declare Sub NSShowAnimationEffect Lib CocoaLib _
(NSAnimationEffect as Integer, _
PointX as Integer, _
PointY as Integer, _
SizeW as Single, _
SizeH as Single, _
Null as Integer, _
Null2 as Integer, _
Null3 as Integer)
dim point as MemoryBlock
// Create the Point
point = new MemoryBlock(8)
point.SingleValue(0) = X
point.SingleValue(4) = Screen(0).Height - Y
NSShowAnimationEffect(NSAnimationEffectPoof, _
point.Long(0), point.Long(4), 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
End Sub
That's really all there is to it. It's amazing how stupidly simply it is, yet there's actually some complex stuff going on that we don't have to worry about because thankfully Charles has taken care of it for us. I strongly recommend you read Charles' book if you're intrigued by the topic. Charles even has a spell check panel working with an EditField!
Finished
I initially wanted to have this up on Saturday, but unfortunately I ran into some problems (silly and my fault). As always, you can download the project here.