Stay in menu bar not dock?

[moep]

I agree with this request.
It’d be nice to have an option to send transmission to the menu bar.

[Jethryn Freyman]

As livings said:

Transmission is a full, normal application, and therefore stays in the dock. There's nothing more to it.

[booshtukka]

I'm sorry, some "full, normal applications" have an icon in the menu bar, some don't.

There are no developer's guidelines saying how to do this, so you are imposing your own opinions on others as a kind of decision on how applications should act. If I want applications to behave in this manner, you cannot tell me I am wrong. It is how I choose to use my machine, and an individual's opinions and preferences are not "wrong". If the developers choose not to implement this, and find other functionalities more useful and appropriate that is absolutely fine, of course.

But I am a software developer too, and you just can't sit there and tell me how applications should behave like it is in some magic book somewhere.

If there is an app where I do not need to typically see the main window and that runs in the background, I don't want its icon in the dock. Examples of this include last.fm, twitterriffic, ted and so on. These apps can alert me to something via growl or their icon, but the rest of the time I don't need to see them. Transmission fits nicely into this category. It runs in the background doing tasks that I typically don't need to know about until they are finished. I'm not sure what you mean by a "full, normal application". Word or Calculator - I run those, and then close them. They don't normally run in the background or alert me of things. Are they full and normal applications?

Anyway, sorry to go on. If it won't be implemented that's fine, I just don't think you can tell the people on this forum that their opinions and ways they want to use their computer are wrong.

[livings124]

There are no developer's guidelines saying how to do this, so you are imposing your own opinions on others as a kind of decision on how applications should act.

Apple has very thorough developer guidelines, including guidelines on menubar icons.

And yes, as the developer of this application, I CAN tell you how this application should behave. And on this design aspect, you are wrong.

[Jordan]

But I am a software developer too, and you just can't sit there and tell me how applications should behave like it is in some magic book somewhere.

And, Transmission is free software. Have fun!

[booshtukka]

livings124 - it's your software, make it as you wish, and thank you very much for doing so It is by far my favourite BT client.

But my opinion in how something should work is my opinion. It is not wrong, exactly as you could not tell me I was wrong for liking music you did not.

I will read up on the Apple guidelines.

Other people in this thread have the same opinion as me. Don't add this feature, it is your prerogative.

[booshtukka]

http://developer.apple.com/documentatio ... ion_4.html

"Important: Don’t create your own menu bar extras. Use the Dock menu functions to open a menu from your application’s icon in the Dock." - you are completely right, I apologise.

I reserve the right to disagree still!

[Debu]

Gracefully done, booshtukka!

[prostuff1]

I have been messing around with the code and I might have a very simple menubar created in a week or two. I have finals for class all next week so i doubt that i will get a chance to look into it much until then.

There is a good tutorial here: http://www.sonsothunder.com/devres/revo ... sMenu.html
for creating your own menubar app. If you have any programming experience then it is fairly simple to get the menubar to do the simple stuff.

Out of curiosity what would people want in the menubar? I will take suggestions but i don't want to add unnecessary stuff to it… i want to keep it as clutter free as possible.

[booshtukka]

I have few requests:

Do not show Transmission in the dock
Change the icon if new items are downloaded
Make it easy to get to the main window and to hide it

Thank you

[mbarriault]

Though the guidelines recommends not making menu bar extras, it is clearly one many programs do not follow. I, too, think it would be great if Transmission had a menu bar extra that displayed status information about transfers. Perhaps a standalone app that worked in conjunction with transmission-daemon while the main interface remains closed?

[booshtukka]

Sounds good. The typical problem with this being implemented, is when a window is opened via the menu bar, the actual menu bar menus disappear. This may be unsurmountable, in which case a cut down version of the menus should be available via the menu bar icon?

Thank you so much.

[Astrophil]

I came across this thread just now from a google search. I was happily using Transmission, when it occurred to me that it would be great to be able to access transmission from the menubar. I read through the thread, and thought I might share a few of my thoughts, as an admittedly uninformed outsider concerning the programming community.

First, I completely acknowledge and honor the developers' right to do as they wish and see fit regarding their own program. Also, it's clear from the thread that Apple's guidelines discourage menubar functionality.

However, from my lay-person's perspective, that doesn't really make sense to me as an average user, and it doesn't seem to correspond with my experience on the mac, both using third-party applications and Apple's own software.

As I am writing this, my menubar contains the following, starting to the left of the clock: battery, volume control, airport, bluetooth, applescript, ichat, google notifier, shimo VPN. All of these except the last three are standard built-in features of the OS. Shimo and Google are both third-party, and simply may be ignoring Apple's guidelines. But the remaining item, iChat, Apple's own program, seems to fly in the face of Apple's own recommendations. Granted, it also comes standard with the OS, but I hardly consider it an OS utility equivalent to battery status or airport connectivity.

Rather, I see it as a standalone program that provides the option to access some limited functionality and status information from the ever-present and unobtrusive menu bar.

Google's notifier is convenient for me to always be able to glance at my menubar and see the status of my inbox. With Shimo VPN, I can quickly see how long I have been connected without switching programs or windows. I hide my dock to maximize real estate, so the dock icon is of little help for this kind of passive monitoring.

In a Transmission menubar, I would envision an icon with an updating display of the global DL/UL rate. When clicked, I envision seeing a dropdown menu providing quick access to the full program window, a list of active transfers and their progress, and maybe options to quit or go to preferences (in addition to what is currently offered from the dock icon menu). In short, something very much like the Google Notifier menubar item.

I have no knowledge of programming, so these ideas may be unworkable for technical reasons beyond my understanding. The developers may also be opposed to these types of ideas because they are trying to avoid bloat (in addition to wanting to adhere to Apple's guidelines). I am not at all suggesting that the developers are wrong or unfounded in their position. Transmission is a slick, lean, user-friendly and mac-worthy piece of software, and I like it a lot. I just thought I would add my two cents to the conversation.

If any of the developers would like to respond, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing a more detailed account of their reasons for opposing a menubar item. Otherwise, thanks for a great (free!) piece of software, and keep up the good work.

[prostuff1]

I am working on getting a menubar working in a basic form. Most of it is easy as all the calls i need for the general stuff like, "About Transmission", "Preferences", "Pause All", "Resume All", etc. are all easy to wire up to an NSMenu and NSStatusItem in interface builder. The one other thing i would like to get working before i create a topic of my own and explain how to use this is to basically display the badge in the menubar. I have it mocked up and connected in interface build but i am having trouble getting it to do what i need. I think i have found the code that controls the dock badge but i am unsure how to use it. I will be talking to livings124 some more to see if i can get some insight and hopefully get this up and working.

Later on i would like to add a submenu that will contain all the torrents in there various fazes.

Please be patient as this may take me a while. I am just starting out in my Objective-C programming and not having written any of this code it can be quite confusing to dig through.

[prostuff1]

OK, i have a version up and working on my system. that adds the menu bar icon. I do not have a way to hide the dock icon programatically yet, but i am working on that. I am honestly not sure how to distribute this and would prefer some input on how to do it.

As far as getting the dock icon to go away you can do this yourself using a program called dockless. Just do a search for it and it will allow you to hide the icon while i try to figure out how to do this.