transparency problem....

Hey, I'm going to have scrolling text on top of a textured image in my program, so the area where the text is needs to be transparent so you can see through to image. Here's the problem:
Using the worthless (for scrolling anyway) label control, I get tons of flickering. Someone suggested I use a picture box, but here's the problem with that: If I put the same image as the background image in the picture box, then the patterns don't match up at all (remember, it's a textured image!). And, I didn't see anywhere to set a picturebox background to transparent. Sooo, my question is: What kind of control do I need to use to accomplish this? Is there an activeX control I can d/l to do this? I'd like to stay away from directx as someone before mentioned that would be overkill for my purposes. Any help is appreciated.

Is the image tiled or not? How is the text scrolled, just from right to left again and again, is it bouncing, etcetera....

(just trying to collect some info before I start writing code :))

text just scrolls from left to right, and, no, the image is not tiled. Thanks for any help you can give.

(hopefully the next piece of code is bug-free, no VB here, sorry)



Drop a picturebox on your form.

Name: picBackground
Picture: Your background image
AutoSize: True
AutoRedraw: True
ScaleMode: vbPixels
Font: Whatever font you want to use


Also drop a timer on your form:

Name: tmrScroll
Interval: 100 (experiment with this, unfortunately, the timer practically won't go lower than 50, or 10 on Windows NT)
Enabled: True



In the General -> Declarations of your form:

VB Code:

Private lXPos As Long
Private Message As String

Form_Load:

VB Code:

Sub Form_Load()
  lXPos = picBackground.ScaleWidth
  Message = "Ain't that cute!"
End Sub

tmrScroll_Timer:

VB Code:

Sub tmrScroll_Timer()
  ' Move text (change -1 for faster movement)
  lXPos = lXPos - 1
 
  If lXPos < picBackground.TextWidth(Message) Then lXPos = picBackground.ScaleWidth
 
  ' Clear the picturebox
  picBackground.Cls
 
  ' Draw the text
  picBackground.CurrentX = lXPos
  picBackground.CurrentY = (picBackground.ScaleHeight - picBackground.TextHeight(Message)) / 2
  picBackground.Print(Message)
 
  ' Display changes
  picBackground.Refresh
End Sub

Now that's the non-API way, you could also replace CurrentX, CurrentY and Print with the TextOut API, but I don't know the declaration, and this should also work theoretically :)

Note that when you are going to use the API, ScaleMode has to be Pixels, so just in case I already let you set it ;)

Hope that helps...