Phil's Blog (Page 2)

More issues

SwiftUI's handling of the Mac menu bar is still pretty bad

While trying out a few things around the SwiftUI document handling and lifecycle in a macOS application, I came across a pretty bad issue. Not only did it not do as the API promised, it actually messed with the menu in ways that would be unrecoverable to a SwiftUI lifecycle

Fixing “Too many HTTP redirects” errors with Cloudflare + Ghost blog

I was recently working on moving this blog to a new domain (philz.blog). It is set up as a Ghost self-hosted instance on a DigitalOcean droplet. And, as usual, I wanted Cloudflare in front of the traffic. So, I set up the new domain, then SSH'ed into

Synchronizing ScrollViews using SwiftUI

Synchronizing the scrolling positions between 2 (or more) ScrollViews in SwiftUI is a fairly common problem. There are a few questions and answers online covering it. Some solutions are passable, but none are satisfying. With the release of iOS 18.0 and macOS 15.0, SwiftUI has gained a few

SwiftUI's New Geometry Modifiers & Best Practices: onGeometryChange, onScrollGeometryChange, and More

SwiftUI has recently introduced a family of geometry observation APIs: onGeometryChange, onScrollGeometryChange, and onScrollPhaseChange. The former is back deployed all the way back to iOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura. These new modifiers are a pretty big deal in a few ways.

SwiftUI FocusedValue, macOS Menus, and the Responder Chain

On macOS, you can use the SwiftUI FocusedValue API to achieve a behavior similar to that of the Responder Chain, including autoenabling menu items.

Vibrancy, NSAppearance, and Visual Effects in Modern AppKit and SwiftUI Apps

When working with NSVisualEffectView and vibrancy on macOS, it is somewhat common to find yourself in a situation where UI elements are not being rendered as you’d expect them to. Here are the possible problems the addition of vibrancy can cause, reasons behind them, and the tools at our disposal.

The Application Model is Outdated

The fundamental way we interact with computers hasn’t really changed since the 1980s. Sure, we’ve added more layers of complexity, polish, and buttons you wanna lick – but are things really that different?

The Bleakness of Chat Interfaces

If the future of user interfaces is text fields and chat bubbles, it’s probably a future I don’t wanna participate in shaping. But then of course it’s not.

Personal Website Tidbits

I'm going to share the open-source packages that I've used while putting together my new personal website (philz.work). I’ve been really impressed with the results I’ve been able to achieve in a short amount of time and with a relatively low amount of effort (because, you know, day job and all).