How do you have a cell highlight momentarily and fade out when selected?

Question

I've noticed that in some apps, when the user selects a table view cell, it will momentarily highlight, but the highlight will immediately fade out (i.e. you can tell that the cell has been highlighted, but the highlight doesn't stay -there is just a checkmark).
When I select a cell, I want the selected cell to stay selected, but have the highlight fade out immediately. I can't see any options to achieve this effect. I've tried using the setHighlight edmethod to set the cell to be unhighlighted in the didSelectRowAtIndexPath method:
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
UITableViewCell* tableViewCell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];
tableViewCell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark;
[tableViewCell setHighlighted:NO animated:YES];
However, this does not appear to work. I don't know if this is because I've done something wrong with trying to implement this code, or if the approach I'm attempting is not how you're supposed to go about it. If anybody has any ideas I'd be grateful.

Answer 1

m_userName wrote:
When I select a cell, I want the selected cell to stay selected, but have the highlight fade out immediately. I can't see any options to achieve this effect. I've tried using the setHighlight edmethod to set the cell to be unhighlighted in the didSelectRowAtIndexPath method:
The Selected State and the Highlighted State are actually independent. I.e. a cell can be selected but not highlighted and vice versa. This can be confusing because, for a standard cell the appearance of the Highlighted State tracks the Selected State style (except the Highlighted State doesn't change the label text to white). But if you subclass a cell you can make the two states appear quite different.
So the solution is to turn off the Selected State of the cell. This doesn't change which index path is selected. The table view keeps track of that, so turning off the Selected State of the cell only affects its appearance. However, whenever a selected index path is scrolled out of view and then back, the cell that's placed at that index path must be manually reset to it's Non-Selected state before it's displayed. This is because whenever a cell for the selected index path is obtained from tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:, the system will set that cell to the Selected State.
// MyTableViewController.m
#import "MyTableViewController.h"
@implementation MyTableViewController
#pragma mark Table view methods
- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView {
return 1;
- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
return 24;
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView
cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";
UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
if (cell == nil) {
cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault
reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
cell.textLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Row %d", indexPath.row];
// set selection style to None here to prevent a flash when indexPath is selected
cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;
return cell;
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView
willDisplayCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
cell.selected = NO;
BOOL isSelectedPath =
[indexPath compare:[tableView indexPathForSelectedRow]] == NSOrderedSame;
cell.accessoryType = isSelectedPath ?
UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark : UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;
// reset selection style here, after the cell has been set to the Non-Selected state
cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleBlue;
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didDeselectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
UITableViewCell* tableViewCell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];
tableViewCell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
UITableViewCell* tableViewCell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];
tableViewCell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark;
[tableViewCell setSelected:NO animated:YES]; // <-- setSelected instead of setHighlighted
@end
- Ray