Drawing on a transparent usercontrol...

[crptcblade]

I need to be able to overlap usercontrols with userdrawn items on them. Unfortunately, the shapes I'm drawing get covered up by the other usercontrols. Is there a way to have a transparent control that still allows drawing code to work? I've tried setting the Windowless property to True, and it didn't do anything.

[crptcblade]

*snert*

[crptcblade]

All right, one last bump, then I'll let this die...

[Eyes.Only]

dont quite understand your scenario. By UserControls are you talking custom activeX usercontrols? and when you say your shapes on the 1st usercontrol are covered up by another usercontrol... what do you want it to do? have your shapes jump onto the 2nds usercontrol?

...im confused

[crptcblade]

Yup, ActiveX controls.

Here's the scenario...

I'm drawing shapes on the control the Line method, the Polygon API, etc. When I overlap these controls on a form, parts of the bottom-most controls are cut off, I'd like to know if there is a way to prevent this. I'll attach a screenshot to illustrate the issue.

[carp]

I know! But im not telling you because you are always a dink in my threads, so....

[crptcblade]

Originally posted by carp
I know! But im not telling you because you are always a dink in my threads, so....

Fine, then you don't get any of Lincoln's treasure then...

[Eyes.Only]

haha ok i see. So basically thats all you wanted, a transparent usercontrol.

What you need to do is Get desktop DC (anything showing at the time) and paint it to the background of the control. Which is tricky...

I BitBlt each pixel of the desktop DC onto my control, whatever part of my control didnt have something on it. In my case i was able to make the control Blue (a color which i never used on it) and if the pixel was Blue then paint the corresponding pixel from the desktopDC.

I put all that into 1 function, then called it in the
UserControl_Resize() and UserControl_Show() Events...

*shrug*

[crptcblade]

Wow, I didn't think it would take all that, but I'll give it a shot.

Thanks.

[sunnyl]

I'm trying to do something similar to achieve translucency on my usercontrols and I've just read the description. It sounds pretty good. But if I was blitting what was on 'behind' the usercontrol onto the usercontrol then the usercontrol needs to be hidden when the blitting takes place.

In my case, the usercontrol is also draggable, ie when it is being dragged, the area blitted to the usercontrol needs to be updated....wouldn't all the hiding/showing cause alot of flickering?

[crptcblade]

I've actually found a much easier way. Using CreatePolygonRgn and SetWindowRgn worked for me.