if the transparentkey property is used to make the top level form transparent,it works , but it also makes the main form click-throughable. I want the opposite of this, that the form becomes transparent, but is still able to recieve clicks. can this be done ?
Here is een solution. The form is totaly transparent and still clickable.
There is also
myform.Opacity = .75
.. which you can change as required. It may work better depending on your needs - you don't state whether its the whole form or only part of it you want transparent. Also, from MSDN on TransparencyKey:
Any mouse actions, such as the click
of the mouse, that are performed on
the transparent areas of the form will
be transferred to the windows below
the transparent area.
.. so it would seem that wont help you at all.
Related
I'm using Windows 10, Visual Studio 2017 and writing a C# Windows Form Application.
I have a windows form application that I am writing (partly in an attempt to get better at writing such things). I have designed my form nicely, with everything spaced and sized properly, but when I press F5 to start the form to debug it, I find that it loads at about 75% the size of the one I see in the designer.
This resizing seems a bit hit and miss, with buttons that were previously aligned no longer being so, and text no longer fitting in its spaces (see pic - the top part shows the designer and the bottom shows the actual form being run).
I would like to have the designer accurately reflect the final look of the form - does anyone know what is going on or how to avoid the problem? Everything I have looked at on the web talks about choosing to resize the form, not this enforced resize!
Have you changed the whole form font size? By default WinForms designer set
this.AutoScaleMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoScaleMode.Font;
try changing the AutoScaleMode and see what happens.
I've experienced similar WinForms designer issues when the default Font (in the form property) size is not 8,25pt. I dont't know why but seems related to desktop and/or screen configuration. Not sure but some weird behaviours could be bugs (WinForms is now quite old...).
AutoScaleMode.Font means that form scaling is based on font size. So trying changing different font settings can solve the problem.
hope this help
When designing the form, the form automatically sets the anchor points to Top Left. You will have to set the anchor points to your form.
The anchor style works like this. On a control if you set anchor points to:
Top/Right then the control stays in the Top Right.
Top/Left then the control stays in the Top Left. Bottom/Right then the control stays in bottom right. Bottom/Left then the control stays in bottom left.
Top then it stays at the top.
Bottom then it stays in the bottom.
Left then it stays in the Left.
Right then it stays in the right.
Top/bottom stretches top to bottom.
Left/Right stretches left to right.
Now when you anchor a control to any of those combinations they will stay in that location when form is maximized. Controls can anchor to each other as well.
I hope this helps.
Also here is a tutorial I did on this.:
https://youtu.be/wlZ6pt79v1E
accurately reflect the final look of the form
Your form's appearance is mostly decided by the end user. Font, size, colour, scale, contrast... all these things are under the users control, not yours.
Consider using split panels, and maybe some flow panels. Get used to 'randomly sizing' the form when you think you've finished designing, to see how it reacts to being the 'wrong size'. Someone will find a way to shrink or grow your form, and handling that gracefully is easier than enforcing a view.
I'm looking to add a 'mapview' type control to my project.
It must have a 'main map' image with clickable transparent rectangles with borders and icons/images that can be animated when an event occurs.
What would be the best way of achieving this using windows forms in C#?
My first thought was to use a picture box with other items on top of it but I might run into problems with transparency etc.
Are there any libraries or anything out there that would be able to achieve this?
No need for a library, really:
I would go for a regular doublebuffered Panel subclass or even a PictureBox subclass for the board/map along with a movable Label or Panel subclass fpr the rectangles/items.
Important: Make sure the Labels are not just 'put on top' of the PictureBox but really nested!! (lbl.Parent = pbox). Then transparency will work just fine..
Since PictueBox is not a 'container', to nest a control in it you need code. But since you probably want to create them dynamically this is not an issue anyway.
This assumes that the rectangles are not overlapping! For overlapping controls transparency in winforms will not work.
The clearer you understand the 'animate when event' part the easier the rest of the code will be..
Since you mention 'animation', a word of warning: Simple animation, especially in reponse to a user action is doable; for more classy animation you may run into the limits of winforms.
I'm working in C#, in Visual Studio, and I'm trying to make a transparent form - entirely transparent, though not click-through - without making the title bar transparent, so that there's still something to move the (invisible) window around and (most importantly) close it.
It'd also be nice if the window had visible borders, but that may be a separate question.
If I understand your question correctly, you can Use TrancparencyKey
Set TrancparencyKey and BackColor properties both to same color like Color.Red.
Here is the screenshot of transparent form over visual studio:
Note:
When you use for example Color.Red every thing works fine and you can handle mouse Click. But the behavior is different for different colors, for example Color.Magenta the form can not capture the mouse Click.
Hello,
Above is the program I am writing. On the right panel is basically two custom controls (the blue rectangle area) I created and just added them as controls to the background panel control when this winform program loads.
I used MS paint to draw out the pop up balloon that I want to see when my mouse enter this control's area. I want to do the following:
1. If mouse enter the control area, the yellow area balloon pop up and populate with the information of that specific control
2. If mouse move out of the control area, the pop up balloon disappear.
Can this be done with Winform application? I looked around and found out about Tooltip class but so far from researching I don't know if it does what I want to do.
I could be wrong but googling around gave me the impress that Tooltip offers very little in term of style. Ideally I want to make this pop up balloon into almost like a border-less pop up window where I can put image , font ect.....at will. Also Tooltip works if you hover over a button or specific field whereas I want the entire control area.
Can this be done? I appreciate if you can point me to any work around if there is one.
I wrote a comment, but I figure I'll expand it into a full answer. This is assuming you want a new control, which isn't a tooltip, for maximum customizability. I did something similar to this for work recently, to act as a non-modal info popup that disappears when clicked.
Creating a Custom Popup Form
What you want is essentially a floating popup that appears over your form, which means you'll want to define a new Form object, rather than a UserControl, as it won't actually be embedded within your other form.
Give it a multiline, non-editable textbox that you can fill with the information you want to populate, then simply call a new instance of the form on your Mouse_Enter event. Close it upon Mouse_Leave.
Adjusting The Style
You'll have to play with it a bit to get it to actually act like a popup and not just a window. I'd recommend setting it to a non-modal popup, and removing the border. You can write a function to automatically size it to its contents. I don't imagine you'll want the user manually resizing it.
Some other things to look into would be overriding the CreateParams property that comes with the basic Form object. You can force DropShadows and TopMost forms without making the form modal. Overriding ShowWithoutActivation to always return true will prevent the form from stealing focus when it pops up.
I'm not sure if you can pull off rounded edges like you have in your mockup. Perhaps you can pull it off with some wizardry in the OnPaint() function, but I couldn't tell you how to do it.
It might be a bit of a pain for fiddling around with, but you can get some good functionality and appearance out of it. If you think you can pull it off acceptably with the ToolTip class, go for it. It took me about a week to get my notifications where I wanted them (though I added several features that you probably don't need to worry about).
Examples
Some keywords to look up in related searches would be Toast Notification and Non-Modal Popup. This might be some use:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/442983/Android-Style-Toast-Notification-for-NET
Since you already have implemented custom user controls you might want to try it again. Make a control that is that style and color, changes it's size based on it's text. You can feed it information (such as the text to display) from your existing user control object. You can also have the mouse enter/leave code reside in your first user control.
If you're not sure how to make a rectangle with round corners you can either make it on the fly using a graphics object (which will turn into a bitmap on the screen) or make it how you want it to look in GIMP (or photoshop if you have it) then use that image as the background on your user control. Make the default background transparent (so your voids above the round corners are not grey). If you make a pre loaded image you'll need to be aware you will only be able to scale it equally in Y and X directions. unequal scaling will make it look distorted.
Can you use the Mouse_Enter event on the control?
Ok, I have googled, but maybe I put my search in weirdly. :/
I have a VB.NET WinForms application. I have the anchor properties set for all the controls so that it will resize all the controls to look decent when the form is maximized. (Haven't gotten around to manual resizing yet however).
Anyway, the problem:
I go to set the same properties for a button (testing with a single button for now) on the main GUI form/picture. When I go to run the program via F5, it looks decent. But when I maximize the form, the entire button covers up more than it should.
I've taken screenshots of the form so you can see a visual of what I'm talking about. :/
Before: http://zack.scudstorm.com/before.png
After: http://zack.scudstorm.com/after.png
What other propert(y|ies) do I need to set for the buttons to show up correctly? :/ (The buttons go over the boxes that say, for example, "1-1", "2-3", etc.
Thanks,
-Zack
Seems like you have anchored top-left and bottom-right when what you want is just top-left.
Edit: If it's just an image that does not change when the winform changes, then don't anchor your buttons at all. Just put them where they go. If you are scaling the image, then I would either detect the clicks on the image and do the scaling math or do the scaling math and set my buttons in code in the Form.OnResize event.
As it appears that your goal is just to be able to handle clicks on the "computers"...
One option that can be useful for this sort of task is to create an "overlay" bitmap (not displayed, but which is the exact same size as your source bitmap) which uses different colors to represent all the clickable regions. (e.g. (R=0,G=0,B=0) for computer 0, (0,0,1) for computer 1, etc)
You could even generate this bitmap somewhat automatically without too much trouble (If you have a mode where you can click the top left and then bottom right corners of the image to define a new region)
When the mouse is clicked, you can check the pixel at the scaled coordinates of the mouse position in the overlay and determine what their click corresponds to. This can be a lot easier than creating loads of controls, and makes it a lot easier to have clickable regions that aren't rectangular.