Highlight NSToolbarItems

Question

I want to highlight the selected NSToolbarItem like e.g. in Adium (see screenshot).

highlight http://a2.s3.p.quickshareit.com/files/screenshot_b28b67ba9411513d6.png

Is there an easy way? If not, tell me the difficult one. =)

Answer 1

To expand upon Chuck's answer, you simply need to make your controller the delegate of your NSToolBar and implement the toolbarSelectableItemIdentifiers: delegate method in it. For example, the following implementation will let you retain the selection highlight on every toolbar item except for the one labeled "Inspect":

- (NSArray *)toolbarSelectableItemIdentifiers:(NSToolbar *)toolbar
{
    NSMutableArray *allIdentifiers = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

    for (NSToolbarItem *toolbarItem in [toolbar items])
    {
        if (![[toolbarItem label] isEqualToString:@"Inspect"])
            [allIdentifiers addObject:[toolbarItem itemIdentifier]];
    }

    return [allIdentifiers autorelease];
}

I cache the allIdentifiers array in an instance variable when I do something like this, so that I only have to do the array construction once.