[2008] Transparent ListView

[obi1kenobi]

At long last, here it is: the TransparentListView control I promised to share in this thread, quite a long time ago. Special thanks to kleinma and other forum members who contributed to this project. Here's a screenshot of where it stands at the moment:



The only known issues which I couldn't tackle were intermittent designer issues, such as lack of ListViewItem transparency in the designer, and the issue of selecting an item when the TransparentListView is scrolled to the right. I have sorted out everything to the best of my ability. If anyone can help with these issues and any new ones which may arise, please feel free to do whatever you can to help fix them.

Here's a short tutorial to using the control:

The TransparentListView is actually completely transparent. The TransparentListView is located on a Panel control which provides the effect in the screenshot. You can also use gamma effects (available here), gradient effects or any other effect which may be applied to a Panel. The HighlightColor property will enable you to set a custom ARGB color for highlights. The RedrawInterval is the time interval (in ms) after which to redraw the TransparentListView during and after scrolling. Its default value should be 15 (providing appx 60Hz). If you experience choppy redraws, decrease it - take care though, decreasing it below 6-7ms may result in extreme CPU use. Higher values are recommended for slow CPUs.

If you experience issues when adding a TransparentListView via the designer, add a ListView instead, and then alter the designer code, changing the ListView to a TransparentListView, and reload the form.

EDIT: Note that I developed this control for an application that required only the Details view, so I have not tested the correctness of the owner drawing code for the other views.

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Everyone may use this control for any use he/she sees fit, I would just ask to be credited in their release for the original code of the TransparentListView.

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Here is v1.0 of the TransparentListView, along with a DLL and XML comments (in the zip file). Please disregard the code which is commented out, it is a leftover of tweaks and experiments with the TransparentListView.

Enjoy and use it well!