Hilight Color Not Showing in OS X

Problem

Selecting text does not show any hilight color. This happens only in modal dialogs-- list windows, dimension windows, and any other window that beeps when you click outside the window.

NOTE-- a possibly related problem-- one user reports that clicking to enter text into modal dialogs causes the window to close unexpectedly. We have not yet determined what is different in this user's setup, but we'd appreciate hearing from any other users having similar problems.

Diagnosis

This appears to be a bug in Mac OSX. It seems to be less of a problem in newer versions of Mac OS X. We see it here regularly, in Goldenseal accounting software for Macintosh, and some other programs.

Solution

No solution yet. We have reported it to Apple as a possible bug. Our code just tells the system to hilight the text, and there isn't much we can do if that doesn't work.

NOTE-- It's possible this problem occurs only in Carbon programs. We are gradually converting our code over to the newer Cocoa format, but it's a long, slow process to redo such basic computer code.

Comments

Entered 4/27/06 by Casey. Updated 11/13/2010.