[Recto Bold]

Apologies for the basic nature of my question. Having used and worked with Macs for the last 15 years I have always wanted to get a bit deeper into them and to explore programming. I figure that the best way to learn is to have some kind of goal, so to kick off with I'd like to design a little Menu Bar Extra which displays netwoirk throughput. Very simple - Red light for in, green light for out - Nothing else. That's my target.

Looking through X Code I just don't know where to start. I have amassed some good resources off of the web which cover beginning to program etc. but I can't seem to apply them to X-Code - Even to just get started building the right kind of app. There's plenty info on creating full blown apps, but seems not so much on menu bar extras. If anyone knows of some web based resources that are useful or has experience in this I'd appreciate some advice.

Thanks for your time

RB

[szymczyk]

Originally Posted by Recto Bold

I figure that the best way to learn is to have some kind of goal, so to kick off with I'd like to design a little Menu Bar Extra which displays netwoirk throughput. Very simple - Red light for in, green light for out - Nothing else. That's my target.

There's plenty info on creating full blown apps, but seems not so much on menu bar extras. If anyone knows of some web based resources that are useful or has experience in this I'd appreciate some advice.

The reason there is not much information on menu bar extras is that Apple's Menu Extras API is private, which means most developers don't have access to it. This article provides further information about Menu Extras.

You would be better off learning C or AppleScript, then learning Cocoa and writing small Mac apps. I have an article you can download that shows you how to get started with Xcode. It creates a C++ tool project, but you can use a C tool project instead.

[Thinine]

A network throughput menu extra already exists. I use the form it takes in MenuMeters.

But yeah, learn Objective-C and Cocoa and you're good to go.

[Recto Bold]

Great - Thanks for the help guys. Much appreciated.