NSMenu doesn't start tracking - cocoa

Question

I have a little cocoa app which usually operates in the background (as agent). Sometimes I'd like to be able to popup a contextmenu (no window or s.th. visible at this time).
As I'm only targetting Snow Leopard I tried this:
if (windows) {
NSMenu *theMenu = [[[NSMenu alloc] initWithTitle:#"test"] autorelease];
[theMenu setShowsStateColumn:NO];
[theMenu setAutoenablesItems:NO];
for (id item in windows) {
NSString *labelText = #"some text";
NSMenuItem *theMenuItem = [[[NSMenuItem alloc] initWithTitle:labelText
action:#selector(menuItemSelected:)
keyEquivalent:#""] autorelease];
[theMenuItem setTarget:self];
[theMenuItem setRepresentedObject:item];
[theMenuItem setEnabled:YES];
[theMenuItem setImage:icon];
[theMenu addItem:theMenuItem];
}
[theMenu popUpMenuPositioningItem:nil atLocation:[NSEvent mouseLocation] inView:nil];
}
The menu popsup perfectly but if I hover the items with the mouse cursor they don't highlight and I can't click them.
The menuItemSelected: method looks just like this:
-(IBAction)menuItemSelected:(id)sender {
}
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

I suspect that the windowing system doesn't consider your application to be active, and thus doesn't send mouse events to the menu you've created.
As an experiment, try creating a dummy window before popping up the menu. I'd create an NSPanel, possibly with style NSNonActivatingPanelMask. makeKeyAndOrderFront: your window/panel, then pop up the menu and see what happens.
If this works, I'd stick with the approach and hide the window.