C H A P T E R 1 5

Controls

Rating Indicator Contents and Labeling

By default, the rating indicator displays stars, but you can supply a custom image to replace the stars. Although this section assumes that the rating indicator displays stars, the information applies equally to an image you supply.

A rating indicator does not display partial stars. Instead, it rounds the current value to the nearest integer to display only whole stars. The stars in a rating indicator are not expanded or shrunk to fit the specified length of the control and no space is added between them.

Rating Indicator Implementation

Rating indicators are available in Interface Builder. Start with a discrete level indicator object and change its style to Rating in the Attributes pane of the inspector. To create one using Application Kit programming interfaces, use the NSLevelIndicator class with style NSRatingLevelIndicatorStyle.

Relevance Indicators

A relevance indicator is a style of level indicator that displays the relevance of items, such as search results. For example, Preview uses relevance indicators to show users the relevance of search results, as shown in Figure 15-67.

Figure 15-67 A relevance indicator shows the relevance of each item in a list

Relevance indicators

Indicators

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