application with nonstardard shape

[BK]

Hi all!

How can I made an application that is not standard window-based
application, but instead of this it has a kind of "free form" shape?
For example, I have a transparent GIF image with circle inside and
transparent color outside the circle. And I would like that my
application looks like this circle and remains showing desktop
background around the circle.
How can I do that?

Regards,
Branko

 

[Pete Davis]

Well, I've never done this and I'm taking a guess, but I think the first
step would be to define the region that your window occupies and set the
form's region to that region. After that, you have to handle the non-client
area painting. I'm not really sure what the best way to do it in .NET is, so
maybe someone else can help out there. I know it can be done by working with
the message handler, but there may be events that you can handle to do this
as well. A quick scan of the events didn't show anything that caught my eye,
though.

And then, of course, you'll have to paint the contents of the window.

That should do it, though.

Pete

 

[Chris R]

Shaped Windows Forms and Controls in Visual Studio .NET
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/e...apedWindowsFormsControlsInVisualStudioNET.asp

Chris R.