Control Manager is an API for displaying and reacting to various kinds of controls. Such as Buttons, Check Boxes, Radio Buttons, etc.
| Buttons | Simple push buttons |
| Check Boxes | buttons that show a boolean state |
| Combo Box | a combination of a pop-up list and a text edit box |
| Pop-up Menu | a list of items to choose from |
| Radio Buttons | mutually exclusive choices |
| Text Edit | Simple text box for data entry |
| Static Text | Get and set static text string and color |
| Tab Control | A multi-panel control |
| Slider Control | A simple slider control |
| Clock Control | A control for picking either a date or time |
| ProgressBar | A control that shows % of progress |
In newer documentation and sample code, you may hear the term HIView rather than control, but these are actually the same thing, in fact HIViewRef is a typedef for ControlRef. Some HIView APIs do essentially the same thing as older Control Manager APIs, as documented in [Tech Note 2074].
A more extensive list of new HIView API functions are listed in the [Mac OS X 10.4 Developer Release Notes]