Non Modal Dialogs

I am at the point where I need to add a dialog that appears when he user wants to insert frames. the dialog is quite simple - a popup and a field. The normal way of presenting this to the user is with a modal dialog - or its close cousin the sheet. For me as a user modal dialogs are just not that nice. Suddenly "bang" there is a dialog. It is rarely where you want it and it interrupts your flow. I, personally, fild it's cousin "the sheet" even worse. The animation seems at times agonising - and whatever you wre doing you have to focus your atention at the top of the screen. It looks cool but strewth it is irritating.

For me a far nicer way of doing this a sort of cross between a menu and a dialog. Sounds awefull but is actually quite a nice way of working. This is, more or less, what happens in iCal when you click on an appointment in the calendar view.

A window appears with an arrow as a part of its frame. The slight difference that I want is to dismiss it of you click on something else. In this respect I want something that behaves like a menu. As a user you start a sequence of events but you are not trapped into it - in as much as you don't need to find the cancel button - just click somewhere else.

The first part of this is to draw a custom window. Mat Gemmel has a window that does more-or-less what I want. It is very easy to use and deploy.

There is little more to do than to change the default colour for the background and set it to have no border. It now looks something like this.