PictureBox In SSTab

[arpan_de]

I want to change the back color of SSTab for which I am using a picture in a PictureBox control. Though SSTab has a BackColor property, it doesn't change the back color of the SSTab (which is why I am being forced to use a picture). The Form in which the SSTab resides opens up when a menu is clicked in the parent Form.

Depending upon the skin selected by the user (which they can do from the parent Form), the picture in the PictureBox will change. There are 2 such pictures. The size of the pictures (both GIF files) I am using in the PictureBox is 1.43 KB.

Now what I find is when I change the skin in the parent Form & open the Form which has the SSTab control, the Form with the SSTab control opens up with a very slight flickering. I am not sure if flickering would be the correct term but the attached images might help clarify any doubts.

The Form with the SSTab should actually look like the 2nd image. In fact, it looks also like that ultimately but just a nano-second prior to that, the Form looks like the 1st image shown below after which only it changes to the 2nd image. Though it hardly takes any time to change from the 1st image to the 2nd image, it can be easily made out.

I would like to avoid this. Is the size of the 2 images (1.43 KB) causing this? Are there any ways by which I can avoid this without reducing the size of the images? Only 1 image is used at a time in the PictureBox.

Note that this started happening only after I started using the PictureBox control to render a different color to the SSTab. Also note than I am using 5 PictureBox controls for the 5 tabs - using just 1 PictureBox for all the tabs doesn't work.