Making a palette permanently active/focused?

Question

Is there a simple way that I can make my application's floating tool palettes permanently active? They are all relevant to the open document, so there is no reason for them to be inactive at any point in time.

Answer 1

Use NSPanel for the utility window. That way the panel can also properly hide when the app is not active (it's a flag, though).

Consider making it 'Non-Activating':

If the receiver is a non-activating panel, then it becomes key only if the hit view returns YES from needsPanelToBecomeKey. This way, a non-activating panel can control whether it takes keyboard focus.