Currently, the menu buttons in VE don't change when one of their options are activated. For example, if I activate bold text and immediately start typing, I only know that I'm typing bold text by looking at the text and noticing that it's bold or by opening the formating menu and checking which formating options are highlighted. This can lead to some confusion - if I walk away for a second and come back to the computer, I might have forgotten what formating options are activated, leaving only the option of typing and checking the new text or checking the menu.

I realize that real estate is limited here and I don't think it would make sense from a UX perspective to add additional buttons on-demand, but the fact that formating options are activated could be presented to the user more understandably by highlighting the button which opens the formating menu in question as soon as any of the options in that menu are highlighted. That way the user would know, e.g. if he's activated italic and bold formating, that at least one direct formating option is currently active. When he clicked the text formating menu, he would see which individual options were activated. The same could be applied to the paragraph formating and list menus.