Default UITableViewCell text label background color

Question

I need a table view cell that just has simple text but with custom backgroundView images when not selected vs. selected. I'm too lazy to implement a custom cell, so I was using the regulation UITableViewCell, setting the backgroundView and backgroundSelectedView. The problem is for non-white backgroundView, when the cell is not selected, the text has a white box around it (the background color of the label containing the text, I assume), which looks horrible. When the cell is selected, the default UITableViewCell implementation takes care of changing the text color to white and text label background to clearColor and the custom backgroundSelectedView shows through beautifully. Is there a reason why the text label shouldn't just have a clear background color ALL THE TIME?? If the UITableViewCell is not customized for backgroundView, i.e., the cell background is white, the clear colored text label is no different from a white colored text label. If the backgroundViews are customized to non-white, a clear text label won't be in the way of the backgroundView showing through.
Does this sound like a good feature request?
How does one submit requests or bug reports for iPhone SDK anyways??
Thanks.

Answer 1

fitzyjoe wrote:
I am having this exact same problem right now. Did you have to subclass UITableViewCell to fix it?
I had the same problem and subclassed UITableViewCell to solve it. I set the backgroundView and selectedBackgroundView to UIView instances I wanted to use and then implemented setSelected:animated: in my subclass.
{code:}
-(void)setSelected:(BOOL)selected animated: (BOOL)animated {
[super setSelected: selected animated: animated];
for (UIView *view in self.contentView.subviews) {
view.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
{code}
Bit bruteforce and as Apple suggests this will impact table performance, but the tables I work with aren't that big and it works well so far.
It'd be nice if UITableViewCell honored backgroundView like it does selectedBackgroundView, i.e. when the backgroundView property is set keep the cell contents transparent.