I don't think this is a design time vs run time issue - it's a question of how the controls implement transparency.
It largely depends on whether your controls will overlap other controls or not. If they don't overlap other controls then setting the BackColor to transparent is sufficient - WinForms will paint the parent in the client area. If they can overlap other controls (and I don't really recommend this), you need to do more work and basically call InvokePaintBackground and InvokePaint on all the relevant controls beneath your control in the correct Z order. FWIW - WinForms is horribly inefficient when it comes to implementing transparency - it doesn't appear to apply any clip regions to the parent of a transparent control Andrew -----Original Message----- From: Discussion of advanced .NET topics. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alex Henderson Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 3:04 PM To: ADVANCED-DOTNET@DISCUSS.DEVELOP.COM Subject: [Spam:***** SpamScore] [ADVANCED-DOTNET] Making WinForm control backgrounds transparent at design time Hi all... I'm hosting my own windows forms designer (WinForms 2.0) and have a number of custom controls that can be dropped onto the host and arranged, much like the VS.Net designer... however just like the VS designer any controls with their background flagged transparent are being rendered with the parents background colour... Does anyone know of a way to get the controls to render with actual transparent backgrounds during design time... omitting rendering the background at all (by overriding OnPaintBackground and doing nothing) doesn't appear to work. Cheers, - Alex =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor(r) http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com -- =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor® http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
