how to Paint non-client area in winForms transparent? .Net 4 - winforms

im developing a custom form and i want that the non-client area be transparent. im handling the non client area painting via message number "0x85" and this is what i have tried so far:
Paint using the color "Color.Transparent" -> the non-client area was painted black. If I had used an image of red or black or green, it works perfectly, but transparent = black
Created a transparent image of the size of the form and used the method "myGraphics.DrawImage("img.png")". the background remained black. If I had used an image of red or black or green, it works perfectly also...
Not paint anything (hoping that i just would stay transparent)... not worked

Getting parts of a window transparent requires hardware support, a video adapter feature called layering. Use the form's TransparencyKey property. Set it to an unusual color, like Color.Fuchsia. And draw with that color to get the video adapter to omit the pixels.

Related

Need overlapping button in round cornered Winform

Need a quick suggestion for styling a WinForm. I made it with rounded corners even when re-sized. Now trying to add a close button with a image (ControlBox=false), overlapping or clipped to top right corner. This is what I could end with.
But I wish to make it more like in this example image.
How could I achieve this in WinForm.
Here's the trick : your window doesn't just end with the white part. It extends a little bit further. The close button comes under the 'extra' part. The other sides where the window appears to not be there is actually transparent...or in the case of the image, semi-transparent.
The glow effect is provided by the window. Set the TransparencyKey property of the window to Color.Magenta (its a convention as Magenta is the color least likely to be used in a window). Then set the background image to a white background with a little bit of Magenta in the edges. The Magenta will appear transparent when set as the background image.
Fiddle around with TransparencyKey and you'll understand what I mean
Winforms itself cannot provide this for you without outside manipulation of the windows,
because it still uses win32 windows classes in the background.
If you want transparancy in windows: see articles like:
Cool, Semi-transparent and Shaped Dialogs with Standard Controls
And the method in Win32 to do it:
SetLayeredWindowAttributes

How to overlay white text on a white background in WPF so that it is viewable

My WPF VS 2008 application is working with many different images that are assembled and displayed at runtime. I would like to display some white text on top of those images. My problem is that some images contain a white or light color background.
My question is - is it possible to somehow specify a property or specify a setting in the image object, BitmapImage object (where the image is loaded from), or some other WPF object such that when white pixels from one image overlap white pixels from the other image - they turn a different color so the text will be viewable?
I think it depends on how you 'draw' your text on the images. If you use e.g. a Label, you can try out the 'DropShadowEffect', see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms748273.aspx
This effect should work with all WPF objects and you can try out some transparent black soft shadows surrounding the text (a little bit like a glow).
This will only be visible in bright environments if you adjust the opacity right.
Decided to use a dark background color for the text that is only partially (.35) opaque. This means that the background color of the image comes through for the most part, but for lighter colors it yields enough contrast so that the text is viewable.

How to display a background control in transparent overlapping control?

I'm building a form with two layers of controls. The bottom layer is a set of Panels with defined properties, one of which is a color different from the form background. The top layer is a set of picture boxes I'm using to display a circle. I've set the PictureBox Background to Color.Transparent, and I've offset it from the underlying Panel by one pixel to get the form to draw the underlying Panel. However, the area around the circle in the PictureBox is displaying the Form Background color, not the panel color. I don't want to draw the circle in the Panel, because I want the circles to move between Panels, and actually look like just a circle that's floating across the form independent of the Panel board underneath. Think of the effect as moving a piece on a board game (you see the peg move across the board, possibly on a diagonal not following the normal game path, then stop in a place on the game).
How can I get the PictureBox to have the underlying Form and panels show through, not just the form background color? I'm using C# Visual Studio 2010, and I'm not a terribly experienced programmer, so a code example would be helpful. An image of the form is at:
http://www.imageurlhost.com/images/salgmpcxvcz830c3flt.jpg
Found a way around the problem. I got rid of the Panels for the spaces in the game, and instead drew them as rectangles on the form's background image.

Create a GUI for Application

I have to create a program that starts with a splash screen and a transparent image, but in windows form not working there always the white background, how can I do?
You need to set a transparency key. If you set it to white, it will make everything that's white on the form transparent (doesn't work well with the picturebox control though).
So for instance, you create a panel, and give it the background image you want to be displayed, then set the transparency key to whatever color should be made transparent ;p

WPF FlowDocument - Fonts only black and white

Our app has a WPF FlowDocumentScrollViewer that shows a flowdocument with text in three font colors: Lavender, #FFFFFFE8, and Orange. The background of the Viewer is set to transparent, with the window behind it having a Black background. This works fine for everybody except for one customer. For him, the Lavender colored text shows up as white, and the text that should be the other two colors shows up as black. Black text is hard to read against a black background.
I imagine there is some windows setting that is causing the font colors to be displayed in black and white on his computer. Can anyone please point me to the correct setting? And is there anyway to override this behavior in the xaml or code behind?

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