Vista/7: Full translucent background?

[JJ]

Hello,

Is it possible to extend the Vista/7 border translucency to all window
area? I want to have a translucent background as if the window border
width is so wide that it cover the entire window area but still have the
ability to place text and controls as normal child windows. All of these
without doing manual drawing/painting and let the windows kernel draw
the client background like it does to the window border background. But
I am not sure if this is possible.

Thank you in advance.


Regards,
JJ

[Dee Earley]

Post by JJ
Hello,
Is it possible to extend the Vista/7 border translucency to all window
area? I want to have a translucent background as if the window border
width is so wide that it cover the entire window area but still have the
ability to place text and controls as normal child windows. All of these
without doing manual drawing/painting and let the windows kernel draw
the client background like it does to the window border background. But
I am not sure if this is possible.

Look in MSDN at the Glass API.

Note that the feasability of this depends on your language/environment.
Everything in the new glass area needs to be drawn using GDI+ and be
full alpha channel aware.

There are various tutorials available online that cover the basics.

[Leo Davidson]

Post by Dee Earley
Everything in the new glass area needs to be drawn using GDI+ and be
full alpha channel aware.

Using GDI+ isn't a bad idea (if it's a C++ project) but it's not the
only option.

Any code or APIs which respect the alpha channel will do. (Most of GDI
does not, but bits of it do and you can still use the ones which don't
if you fix the alpha values manually afterwards.)

[Dee Earley]

Post by Leo Davidson

Post by Dee Earley
Everything in the new glass area needs to be drawn using GDI+ and be
full alpha channel aware.

Using GDI+ isn't a bad idea (if it's a C++ project) but it's not the
only option.
Any code or APIs which respect the alpha channel will do. (Most of GDI
does not, but bits of it do and you can still use the ones which don't
if you fix the alpha values manually afterwards.)

Ah, I OK, I thought GDI was all non alpha aware (Unless explicitly
working with alpha stuff like window layering)