I'm using DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea in my WPF application to get the glass effect. This is working fine. What I'd like to do is change the colour used for the glass -- I'm writing a countdown timer, and I'd like the window to be the normal glass colour most of the time, and then to go red (but still with glass) when the time runs out.
I found this question, which talks about how to apply a gradient glass, and that works fine when picking a different colour. Unfortunately, the borders are not coloured appropriately.
When I turn off the borders by using ResizeMode="NoResize", then I end up with square corners. I'd like to keep the rounded corners.
I looked at creating an irregularly-shaped window, by using AllowTransparency="True" and that works fine, but doesn't look like an Aero glass window. It looks a bit flat.
So: my question: how do I create a window in WPF that looks like Aero glass transparency, but uses a different colour?
I think the only possible way to achieve this is to use a semi-transparent filled border and draw it over the entire window or the part you got the glass. Its a workaround but I guess it's a possible solution since the color of the glass gets defined by the system-user and this setting would overwrite yours.
I'm asking the same question myself.
I haven't found a good solution, though the best I've come across so far is doing the following:
HwndSource.FromHwnd(hwnd).CompositionTarget.BackgroundColor = Colors.FromArgb(100,255,0,0);
Unfortunately this tints the minimize, resize and close buttons, which I would rather avoid.
Related
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
Other questions on SE address how to speed up nested UI control resizing, but- what if there aren't any controls?
As you drag the edge of a WPF window, even a main window with no content, black bars flicker briefly during the drag. This produces a crummy feel- one that I don't want to inflict on customers:
It does get slower and heavier with a full UI on top of it as well. This doesn't even get into how ugly it looks when resizing using the top or left edges. Windows Forms- even with the heaviest UI I've built- never looks this bad right off the bat.
What can be done to make WPF window resizing performance comparable to win forms?
(I have Windows 7 x64 and a triple monitor system on an AT Radeon HD 7470.)
You could update your graphic card and try it out again but that wont change anything. The reason is pretty simple. We all get to see this sometimes based how fast/slow our computer is. Sometimes it runs smooth because we do not have many visuals to draw. The reason is no proper background color is found in graphic card at that moment in redrawing process. Your drivers are fine, and its not just because you use Wpf. Other techniques use the same mechanism behind redrawing.
The first thing WPF will do is clear out the dirty region that is going to redraw. The purpose of dirty regions is to reduce the amount of pixels sent to the output merger stage of the GPU pipeline. Here is where we see the black color. Window itself at that point has no background color or its background color is set to transparent and so to us the GPU draws the black background. Things run async in wpf which is good so.
To fix this you could set a fix color such as "White" to the Window. Then the WPF system will clean out the dirty region but fill it automatically with white color instead of black. This usually helps.
Match the window color or the color of top most layer. Dont let GPU use black and you should do fine. Btw Wpf is faster than WinForm so dont worry.
The look is crummy indeed, especially when using the top or left border.
Which exact problem your screen shot is showing depends on how long your app is taking to render as well as a couple of background related settings that you might be able to tweak to get better resize. Plus part of the ugly resize is specific to Aero.
While I can't address the specific crazy slowness of WPF redraw, I can at least give some insight on why you see black, where that is coming from, and whether you can change to a less annoying fill-in color.
It turns out there are multiple different sources of the black and the bad resize behavior from different Windows versions that combine together. Please see this Q&A which explains what is going on and provides advice for what to do (again, not specific to making WPF faster but just seeing what you can do given the speed you have):
How to smooth ugly jitter/flicker/jumping when resizing windows, especially dragging left/top border (Win 7-10; bg, bitblt and DWM)?
Hi everyone I would like to implement an ImageViewer (like the one in Facebook for example) in a WPF application
I already have a ListBox whith my pictures, it works well. But I would like to add pop "image full size" when the user double click on one of them. (something like in FB, with a fade out of the background etc).
Currently I'm thinking of to use a Window...Do you have a better idea of what I should use ?
i would probably use a window for that as well. Then you can easily put an opacity animation when the window loads to give it the fade in and fade out effect
You could also use a Popup control.
It comes with some some built in (but very limited) animations, like fade, see PopupAnimation.
I'd try that and if it doesn't fit your needs, I second bflosabre91 oppionion and would use a separate opacity animated window.
But bear in mind that with an additional window you could have negative side effects e.g always sync the window positions correctly, handle task switches (ie. correctly hide the window in the taskbar/tasklist)
Ive been googling this alot but can't find any working solution. Im using Shell Integration Library to cerate custom Window Chrome and I also need drop shadows for this window. Some say setting GlassFrameThickness to -1 do the trick but its not working for me. And Jeremiah Morrill suggested using DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea. Ive tried that and it works, sort of. The shadows looks ok but when the window is shown it is first shown as a glass-frame and then a second later the real content is superimposed. This causes to much flickering for me. Is there any way to get rid of this flickering or is there any better way using only Shell Integration Library?
I had a similar problem where it wouldn't display any shadow when using a custom chrome. It worked fine when using the glass.
I got a shadow by setting GlassFrameThickness="0,0,0,1". The glass didn't show and I got the shadow.
Be warned, the shadow is a simple RECT to Windows, so if you have a funky chrome with transparencies it may look funny.
Also if you support the maximized state be aware the you'll need to set a margin on your top-level panel element of "8,8,8,8" when in maximized mode. All other modes should be "0,0,0,0".
To alimbada, the WindowStyle defaults to None on custom chrome.
The Shell Integration Library uses DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea, plus handling of several Window messages to get the effects. If you're using the full window rect (i.e. no rounded corners) then setting it to (0,0,0,1) as suggested will give you the drop shadows as you want. If you want to simulate the rounded corners of Aero, then setting it to (8,8,8,8) will extend the glass frame enough that the corners also stay rounded, and then you're responsible for not drawing over the corners of the rectangle. The shape of the drop shadow doesn't change regardless of the glass frame thickness.
The flashing you're seeing when setting the thickness to -1 still exists even when not fully extending the glass frame. What's happening is the window is getting shown while the content is still compositing. What you can do is simplify the default UI so it displays quicker (or you can stage it, bringing in a simnple background first and then replacing it with something usable), or you can create and show the window off-screen, and then move it to the desired start location once the content has been rendered. The easy way to detect when it's probably ready is to invoke a DispatchTimer with Priority=Loaded. That should only get invoked once the basic first layout has been completed.
I have an app with a bunch of controls in it and I want to place a set of cross hairs on top of it. My first attack used a PictureBox and ran into this problem. The solution that fellow proposes, seems a bit... verbose for what I need.
Is there a simple way draw on top of my form? Note that I don't even need the drawing to be part of a control as it doesn't need to do anything but just be there.
This eventually worked. I had to play some games though because most of the controls I wanted to draw on were not where it expected them to be.
Also, it ran into issues when controls were moved; it failed to redraw and stuff moved with the underlying control. This was fixed by forcing invalidation from the move event for anything that might move.
Does a PictureBox with a transparent image have the same problem as a Panel with BackColor set to Transparent? I'm thinking you could have a PictureBox with the crosshair image in it and move that around, instead of drawing it yourself...