The (Container) User Control: Child supports transparency *Resolved*

**Danny J** · Oct 18th, 2003, 03:59 PM

Ok, now that I got my crappy container, I have created my gradient. Now the crappy crap crap problem here is that I want my full of crap UC to be compatible with .NET's crappy alpha blending. crappy crapity crap. Ca-c-crap crap crap crap. Ca-crap c-c-can som-m-m-e-crap s-someone help crap crap crap??

**MrPolite** · Oct 18th, 2003, 04:49 PM

if you stop talking crap it would make more sense

you want teh control itself to be semi transparent?

**Danny J** · Oct 18th, 2003, 05:00 PM

No, I created a gradient User Control with this code.

VB Code:

Private Sub Gradiate(ByVal color1 As Color, ByVal color2 As Color, ByVal mode As System.Drawing.Drawing2D.LinearGradientMode)
        Dim ghcs As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
        Dim brush As New System.Drawing.Drawing2D.LinearGradientBrush(New RectangleF(0, 0, Me.Width, Me.Height), color1, color2, mode)
        ghcs.FillRectangle(brush, New RectangleF(0, 0, Me.Width, Me.Height))
        ghcs.Dispose()
    End Sub

My User Control's soul purpose is to allow alphablending into objects. Some alphablending code would bee down there:

VB Code:

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        Label1.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(100, 255, 255, 255)
    End Sub

Now my whole point here is to let the child control alphablend with my User Control's gradient. What do I end up with? I end up alphablending with my User Control's BackColor. I want it to alphablend with my gradient. Is there any way to do this?

**MrPolite** · Oct 18th, 2003, 05:20 PM

hehe so basically you're trying to make the child controls be semi transparent

umm as far as I know, no, .NET doesnt support this. The only thing it lets you do is to have the child controls have the same background color as the parent control.
a lot of people have asked about this, there may be a solution, but not that I know of. search the vb.net forums though, you may find somethign useful

**Danny J** · Oct 18th, 2003, 05:22 PM

Can you tell me Hdc in VB .NET???

**MrPolite** · Oct 18th, 2003, 05:24 PM

Originally posted by Danny J
Can you tell me Hdc in VB .NET???

Hdc? you mean the handle?

umm if that's what you want, I usually use
someControl.Handle.ToInt32

dunno if that helps

**Danny J** · Oct 18th, 2003, 05:44 PM

Listen, my boss is gonna kill me. I need that code!!

**nemaroller** · Oct 18th, 2003, 10:31 PM

Danny, without pretending you have no idea what you're doing, where are you calling your gradiate function from? I'm assuming your making a call to it from your usercontrol OnPaint event correct? (cause otherwise it woudn't work).

Even further along than that..... I can honestly say that is no shocking surprise its alphablending with the backcolor since your assigining the color to the label backcolor. Label.Backcolor=...

If I understand your dilemma, you are actually wanting to alphablend a region of color (your gradient).. maybe this article will help... http://www.codeproject.com/gdi/pxalphablend.asp

Perhaps if you make a mockup in photoshop and paste it in here, we can get a better idea of your objectives.

**Danny J** · Oct 19th, 2003, 11:09 AM

First of all, the smaple in code project, I don't understand cpp so thats probably one of the reasons I am posting my problem in VB .NET. I made a PSP image like you told me to, so here it is.

**MrPolite** · Oct 19th, 2003, 02:19 PM

take a look at the SetStyle() function, maybe that could help you a little. But still I dont think you can easily fix this

**Danny J** · Oct 19th, 2003, 04:01 PM

I don't have SetStyle and I am using 2003

**MrPolite** · Oct 19th, 2003, 04:03 PM

just type setstyle and press spess, intellisense will do the rest to help you

**Danny J** · Oct 19th, 2003, 04:16 PM

Found it, but

not helping......

**Danny J** · Oct 19th, 2003, 10:36 PM

PLEEEAAASE!! I will even pay someone money for an answer!!! Sommmeeeoooonne!!!!

**MrPolite** · Oct 20th, 2003, 06:45 PM

look, umm, why dont you draw the text on the control instead of using a lable? just use e.graphics.drawString in teh usercontrol's paint event.

again,I think there is no straight-forward way to get this done. So you can find a way around it. I think the easiest way is to draw the text.
is that the only thing you have in your user control? a lable control? that's all? should work if so

**Danny J** · Oct 20th, 2003, 08:41 PM

I am creating this control for one main reason, so I can get the nice bar you see that have a colapsing feature. WinXP bar uses alphablending when the user clicks on the title. You know, Microsoft has made a clear-enough solutions for themselves, so why not cut us some slack??

**MrPolite** · Oct 21st, 2003, 01:11 AM

Originally posted by Danny J
I am creating this control for one main reason, so I can get the nice bar you see that have a colapsing feature. WinXP bar uses alphablending when the user clicks on the title. You know, Microsoft has made a clear-enough solutions for themselves, so why not cut us some slack??

did you try DrawString? should work perfectly

infact I dont see why you want to use a label control

are you using this as the title bar of a form?

**nemaroller** · Oct 21st, 2003, 12:24 PM

Look, tell your boss that instead of paying you $25 an hour to write the code for a control such as this, which theoretically would take a good week of debugging after the writing, tell him to spend $199 on a commercial control.

www.dotnetmagic.com

Download the demo, install it, run the samples, Run SampleTabbedAdv.

**Danny J** · Oct 21st, 2003, 08:11 PM

nemaroller quit being a *&$^

MrPolite I want my my control to be able to allow a child component to alphablend with the fade. Its not just a label.

**nemaroller** · Oct 21st, 2003, 08:26 PM

Danny, not trying to be an a^^. Just trying to save you from headache, and in the process, save your boss some $.

**Danny J** · Oct 21st, 2003, 11:30 PM

It seemed to me you were moking me and my job for a $ 25 dollar labor, and I find that an insult...

**Edneeis** · Oct 21st, 2003, 11:50 PM

I'm not clear on what it is exactly that you are trying to accomplish. Did you ever try the DrawString solution that MrPolite suggested? If so how did it work out? If not why?

**birthjay** · Oct 22nd, 2003, 08:10 AM

I have tried the DotNetMagic and although it appears to be something great, it kept giving me errors and an I think someone else here mentioned that it gave them errors as well. However, if you can get it to work then it might be your best and quickest solution. Another idea is to talk to the guy that developed it. I understand he is an excellent programmer.

On another note, don't tell someone (especially your boss) that you can do something when you can't. As for as the $25 per hour comment, .....well......I know a guy who delivers pizza for a living and is probably better programmer than most folks here. Just because you make more than $25 per hour doesn't make you a good programmer or less of an [insulting comment here]. This thread proves that.

**Evad** · Oct 22nd, 2003, 02:43 PM

2 more days... any luck?

**Danny J** · Nov 1st, 2003, 08:07 PM

After checking the West hemisphere of the globe, at the very end ended up at an abandoned website.

'Just set the BackColor to a translucent color, that will be completly invisible'

That resulted in Color.FromArgb(0, 0, 0, 0)

Thanks so much for all of your help!!

**MrPolite** · Nov 3rd, 2003, 12:03 PM

Originally posted by Danny J
After checking the West hemisphere of the globe, at the very end ended up at an abandoned website.

'Just set the BackColor to a translucent color, that will be completly invisible'

That resulted in Color.FromArgb(0, 0, 0, 0)

Thanks so much for all of your help!!

uuuh how does that work??? that lets you see through the label and see the gradient on your usercontrol?!

but thats same as setting the backcolor to color.transparent at design time

Thread: The (Container) User Control: Child supports transparency Resolved

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