I want to include the occasional programming topic in the Dejal blog, when I encounter something that may be of interest to other Mac developers. Here's my first one.
A while back, I added a Check for Updates... window that displays a WebView of release notes, much like on my site. It works rather well. However, if a beta release has expired, I wanted it to display it modally. But for some strange reason the WebView didn't load when the window was run modally. I couldn't find a solution at the time, so I just had it redirect to the website.
I came across this issue again tonight, while adding Services support to BlogAssist. I'm introducing a handy new feature where you can just hit 
< in any app to display a modal panel like the existing floating window. It includes a WebView to preview how the marked-up HTML will appear. I really didn't want to have to sacrifice that.
So I found a solution: tickle the runloop! It turns out that the WebView will only work on the main loop. So rather than just call -runModalForWindow:, I use the more verbose -beginModalSessionForWindow: / -runModalSession: / -endModalSession: loop. And the key to keeping the WebView happy: call -limitDateForMode: each time around the loop, so the main loop keeps on truckin'.
Here's the code:
NSModalSession session = [NSApp beginModalSessionForWindow:[self window]];
int result = NSRunContinuesResponse;
// Loop until some result other than continues:
while (result == NSRunContinuesResponse)
{
// Run the window modally until there are no events to process:
result = [NSApp runModalSession:session];
// Give the main loop some time:
[[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] limitDateForMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode];
}
[NSApp endModalSession:session];I hope this helps others with this dilemma.
Comments
Webview
Wow...this is kinda crazy.
I was working on a program that used core data and webview, but the webview would never display what I wanted it to...I looked into this modal stuff, but have still not found the answer.
Oh well,
Good job on your solution