I am currently working on a windows form application (C# visual studio).
Is it possible to grey out the entire windows screen when a button is pressed?
How can I work that out?
Is it also possible to grey out the entire screen but leaving an ungreyed space in the middle for a message box for showing some text?
Answers to your question:
Is it possible to grey out the entire windows screen when a button is
pressed?
You can put a control like a panel over the entire window and hide it.
In the button event you then make it visible. Set the background of the panel to gray and vary the transparency to adjust it so until your window visibility beneath it looks right.
This will force the window into a "modal mode" without any way out. So you better have logic for undoing this as well.
How can I work that out?
Make sure you have some event such as completion of an event or query to hide the control or the user will never get back into your application again.
Is it also possible to grey out the entire screen but leaving an
ungreyed space in the middle for a message box for showing some text?
That is more complex and to be honest with you I haven't played with WinForm is some time -- instead doing WPF for desktop. You MAY be able to use clipping but you will have to do quite a bit of research into how to do it. Use Google -- it can be your best friend.
easiest way:use XAML pop-up as described below
<Popup x:Name="pop" IsOpen="False" >
</Popup>
For more details visit below link. http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mahesh/using-xaml-popup-in-wpf/
After this to blur the main grid on eventhandler for the event which shows the pop-up,set the opacity as shown in below C# code
if (pop.IsOpen == false)
{
pop.IsOpen = true;
grdMain.Opacity = 0.4;
}
else
{
pop.isopen=false;
}
Related
I'm trying to place a transparent and borderless child (WinForm) form on top of another child (WinForm) form that is opaque, but I'd like to retain the ability to directly click on the transparent form. There are a few answers on the web regarding making a transparent form that can be clicked through, but I want to make one that I can click on.
I've found this answer, which shows that setting my transparent form's BackColor and TransparencyKey to something specific like Color.Red achieves the desired behavior. However based on this answer, it seems this behavior between certain Colors and TransparencyKey may actually be a long-running bug.
Ideally I don't want to rely on a bug to achieve a desired effect. What would be a more "appropriate" approach for making a clickable, transparent, and borderless (WinForm) form?
Update (Additional Context):
I'm basically creating a screen pixel previewer for color data extraction.
Overlay forms containing captured bitmap(s) of the screen area.
Another form that gives a visual indicator for the pixel area being previewed (small black box in the below snapshot). This form is placed above the bitmap forms. I have this form as transparent (to see through to the below bitmaps), but I still want to be able to click on it for event processing.
Without the TransparencyKey = BackColor = Color.Red trick, clicking within the small black box causes focus to move to the below bitmap form, which then covers up the small box form and the preview window showing the zoomed view. The purpose of the click is to capture the cursor position for additional processing. I can work around this by immediately giving focus back to the small box + preview forms, but that occasionally causes flicker.
In a WPF app, we try to hide the mouse cursor by setting
<Window Cursor="None" ...>
...
</Window>
This works fine, for all controls within that window the cursor is not shown. However, while a long-running operation is in progress, the cursor re-appears combined with the typical Windows 7 progress wheel:
Does anybody know how we can get rid of that wait cursor? (A lot of similar questions have been asked, but it seems everyone tries to do it the other way round and show the wait cursor while we're trying to hide it...)
Try using the OverrideCursor property which will override the cursor for the whole application.
When a form loads, I'd like it to show a loading image (within a Picture Box) and a standard Windows label with some text. However, all I see are white boxes, or sometimes I see another form underneath. How do I get the image and label to display properly.
I've tried setting AllowTransparency to false when the form loads, and also setting the Transparency Key of the form to some other colour, but nothing has worked.
The project is C# .Net v3.5 (also tried v4 and v4.5).
Any ideas?
First, you can't display an image, busy-wait, and then change the image - this will never redraw anything, leading to the symptoms you describe. To "wait" you will need to return control to your main application loop so it can continue to process messages (e.g. to handle redraw requests for your window). One way to do what you want is to display your initial state (splash screen) and then use a timer to call you back later to change the display to your second state.
The next problem you face is using forms controls with transparency. Most controls treat "transparent" as "fill your background with your parent controls color", which is not what you want. An easy way around this is to implement a Paint handler and draw the image and text for yourself - this gives you much more control of how your display looks, and will also allow you to get a cleaner redraw (no flicker or other problems caused by the display being built up but by bit in several controls)
Lastly, consider implementing your splash screen display as a separate control/form that you show above your main form during loading, as that makes it easy to "overlay" on your main form without having to change its design at all.
Just write formObjectName.Refresh() after formObjectName.Show()
I have a winforms C# application that opens multiple dialog boxes. To suit the style of the application, I have removed the default title bars for each window and created my own (with control buttons and drag-to-move function).
The problem that now faces me is that without a titlebar, the user has no way of telling which window is the 'active' window when they are manually moved apart (so they are not overlapping).
In any windows application (that uses titlebars), when you try to navigate away from a dialog box back to the main program (without closing the dialog box) - it wont let you. The border of the dialog box flashes and you hear a windows error sound. Some kind of equivalent visual feedback would be great without needing to have the default titlebars - and tinting an entire window darker seems like it would do the trick nicely.
Something like this in pseudo-code, which would nicely tint the parent window whilst a dialog is open:
// tint window now
window.ShowDialog();
// un-tint window
I have tried to place a panel covering everything with colour set to 'transparent' (with the intention of later controlling the opacity of the panel) but the transparency does not seem to work. Any other ideas of accomplishing this? Or does anyone have a better suggestion to achieve the same level of visual feedback?
Summary:
Is there any way to tint an entire window, or overlay it with a colour? If not, could anyone suggest an alternate method of making the window appear 'inactive'?
I would suggest you to create a method in forms you want to disable:
void DisableForm()
{
//some fancy color
this.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Khaki;
//and disable all controls owned by form, just to be sure
foreach (var s in this.Controls)
{
((Control)s).Enabled = false;
}
}
and functions which enables back those forms of course.
edit.
also you can set visibility property of controls to false
Most recently, while at my mom's house, a phone call came in and the caller ID popped up in a banner on her TV (Comcast). I've seen a similar functionality when the McAfee brings up a virus warning. It was a translucent popup window with the company logo, message and a button or two.
I'd like to mimic this behavior (via C#). This will event driven. My experience in C# is pretty limited, so I'm still feeling out the different libraries. Are there any ideas on where I should start?
I recommended to use WPF. Create new window, that will popup and set next properties:
WindowStyle="None"
AllowsTransparency="True"
Opacity="0.5" //50% transparent
Topmost="True"
Background property will set color of window.
Place on window any controls what you need.
Create this window and show when some event happens:
YourWindow popup = new YourWindow(/*possible args for message on popup, for example*/);
popup.Show();
To place your window in bottom-right corner, as all popups, use next code in windows Loaded event:
this.Left = SystemParameters.WorkArea.Width - this.Width;
this.Top = SystemParameters.WorkArea.Height - this.Height;
How to make animation of window movement you can read in other questions.
If your app is running in the background, you can simply pop up a window and set it to topmost.
Exactly what you do beyond that is going to depend on what type of UI are using (WPF/WinForms.) WPF makes it easier to build a transparent form, as described here:
http://blogs.interknowlogy.com/2007/06/20/transparent-windows-in-wpf-2/
Transparency in WinForms is a little bit harder, but there are some posts about it:
Partial transparency with C# .NET 3.5 WinForms?
A couple of things you will want to do with your pop-up window:
Disable the minimize/maximize/close buttons
Disable the borders
Just put those in your form so it looks better.
-- Dan