Mac app tip: pane splitters often look better

I’ve been going through the Mac App Store. Tons of awesome stuff there, and a bunch that’s so-so and a few things that are, well, rather hurried-looking.

But it occurs to me that many of the apps are made by people new to Mac programming. (They may not be new to Cocoa, but they’re new to Macs.)

So I figure that a series of tips on writing Mac software might be useful. Here’s the first. A simple one.

What’s the difference between this…

…and this?

Answer

The pane-splitter style often (though not always) looks better. It looks like the splitter in Mail.

And it’s easy to do — just set it in Interface Builder, and you’re done.