Question

I’m trying to change the background view for cells that the user starts to drag with the handle out on the right hand side.

Apparently the selectedBackground view is not used in this state, is there any other solution?

Answer 1

This seems to be a tough one. It doesn’t seem as if Apple has provided a way to notify the developer that the user has started reordering a table view cell. So I think this is what you’d have to do:

1. Subclass UITableViewCell.
2. Override the touchesBegan et al methods (this might get you started: http://devblog.wm-innovations.com/2010/03/30/custom-swipe-uitableviewcell/)
3. If you detect a “drag” touch event and the cell’s showsReorderControl property (see http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UITableViewCell_Class/Reference/Reference.html) returns YES, swap out the backgroundView, remembering the previous one.
4. When the touch event ends, restore the old view.
5. Realize that it’s not as easy as above 4 steps.

Custom touch handling inside a tableview is possible but hard. You might have to temporarily disable touch events in the UITableView (climbing up the responder chain) to make this work.
I hope these pointers get you moving in the right direction, though.