Can a form have a transparent background (1 Viewer)

[darbid]

You may find this a little strange but I have a great brushedmetal.png file with rounded edges, dropshadow bla bla.

I was thinking that if I could embed this into a form with a transparent background then I would have a fantastic looking form.

It seems as soon as I insert a form the backgound or detail section goes to black and you cannot change the colour.

I am using Access 2003.

Anyone

 

[darbid]

maybe this thread might fit the VBA section more mods?

I have found out that by using WIN 32 API you can modify the transparency of a standard Access form.

http://blogs.msdn.com/access/archive/2008/04/28/modal-dialogs-with-transparent-backgrounds.aspx

This effect is like if you have VISTA and you are required to confirm your choice...... UAC stuff. The whole sceen dims a little and in the middle of the screen you have one bright window.

Back to Access - the command to do this (which changes the opacity of the form) is (other than the module stuff.....0 would be transperant.

SetFormOpacity Me, 0.7

I am wondering if we can use this to change the opacity of Me.Detail.BackColor?

 

[georgedwilkinson]

Take a look at some of the samples posted in the Samples forum by Dom DXecutioner. He does some interesting stuff. One in particular caught my attention: ACC2000: Custom InterFace - Transparent Floating Panes

Your hypothesis sounds interesting and a bit fun...but I have no clue how to pull it off and don't have time to research it. Let us know what you come up with.

 

[darbid]

Thanks for the link.

It seems that VB can do this easily with for example the TransparencyKey. Where you can allocate a color to be transparent. You can even click through the transperant section to something below it.

But this is all not in VBA.

I think, I guess, to change a form is VBA I am going to have to pull out some API stuff. For me that is going to be a miracle, but I will have a poke around.

For a beginner Google, and try, test and try and test again are my methods.

 

[darbid]

First Attempt

From what I have read eg http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633540(VS.85).aspx

and seen from the example above the "SetLayeredWindowAttributes Function" is the key.

So I created a simple example as follows

this went into a module

Private Declare Function GetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "GetWindowLongA" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal nIndex As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function SetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "SetWindowLongA" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal nIndex As Long, _
   ByVal dwNewLong As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function SetLayeredWindowAttributes Lib "user32" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal crKey As Long, _
   ByVal bAlpha As Byte, _
   ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
Private Const LWA_COLORKEY As Long = &H1
Private Const LWA_ALPHA     As Long = &H2
Private Const GWL_EXSTYLE   As Long = -20
Private Const WS_EX_LAYERED As Long = &H80000
Public Sub SetFormOpacity(frm As Form, trns As Long, sngOpacity As Single)
    Dim lngStyle As Long
 
    ' get the current window style, then set transparency
    lngStyle = GetWindowLong(frm.hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE)
    'SetWindowLong frm.hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, lngStyle Or WS_EX_LAYERED
    SetLayeredWindowAttributes frm.hwnd, trns, (sngOpacity * 255), LWA_ALPHA Or LWA_COLORKEY
End Sub

the make a a form and this this in the on load

Dim transcolor As Long
 
    transcolor = RGB(100, 200, 100)
 
 
    Me.Detail.BackColor = transcolor
 
 
    Me.Painting = False
 
    SetFormOpacity Me, transcolor, 1
    Me.Painting = True

the form also should be

pop-up - yes
record selector - no
borders - none
Detail.BackColor = 6604900 (which should be RGB(100,200,100)
I added a simple close button.

Then open your form. You will get a transparent form except for your button.

Now if I add a nice picture to this with a shadow and transperant otherwise it should appear to be "the form", put controls on it and I have my "skin" eyecandy

 

[georgedwilkinson]

For a beginner Google, and try, test and try and test again are my methods.

That sounds familiar.

 

[georgedwilkinson]

From what I have read eg http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633540(VS.85).aspx

and seen from the example above the "SetLayeredWindowAttributes Function" is the key.

So I created a simple example as follows

this went into a module

Private Declare Function GetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "GetWindowLongA" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal nIndex As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function SetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "SetWindowLongA" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal nIndex As Long, _
   ByVal dwNewLong As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function SetLayeredWindowAttributes Lib "user32" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal crKey As Long, _
   ByVal bAlpha As Byte, _
   ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
Private Const LWA_COLORKEY As Long = &H1
Private Const LWA_ALPHA     As Long = &H2
Private Const GWL_EXSTYLE   As Long = -20
Private Const WS_EX_LAYERED As Long = &H80000
Public Sub SetFormOpacity(frm As Form, trns As Long, sngOpacity As Single)
    Dim lngStyle As Long
 
    ' get the current window style, then set transparency
    lngStyle = GetWindowLong(frm.hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE)
    'SetWindowLong frm.hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, lngStyle Or WS_EX_LAYERED
    SetLayeredWindowAttributes frm.hwnd, trns, (sngOpacity * 255), LWA_ALPHA Or LWA_COLORKEY
End Sub

the make a a form and this this in the on load

Dim transcolor As Long
 
    transcolor = RGB(100, 200, 100)
 
 
    Me.Detail.BackColor = transcolor
 
 
    Me.Painting = False
 
    SetFormOpacity Me, transcolor, 1
    Me.Painting = True

the form also should be

pop-up - yes
record selector - no
borders - none
Detail.BackColor = 6604900 (which should be RGB(100,200,100)
I added a simple close button.

Then open your form. You will get a transparent form except for your button.

Now if I add a nice picture to this with a shadow and transperant otherwise it should appear to be "the form", put controls on it and I have my "skin" eyecandy

Pretty slick. It'd be cool if you posted a sample database in the samples forum.

 

[darbid]

I will put a sample in there for everyone.

There is one thing though. I do not suppose anyone can get VBA and GDI+ to "draw" a png image with ARGB colors (alpha channels) That would really make these transparent forms come alive with eyecandy.

 

[The Nine Inch Ninja]

Re: First Attempt

Hi Darbid, does this work in access 2003, I've tried your example but no joy!

 

[timothyl]

Hello, I am using access 2003 and can not get this to work,

Detail.BackColor = 6604900 (which should be RGB(100,200,100)/QUOTE] turns the back ground green, any Ideas on what to do. Thanks

 

[shadow9449]

Have you seen these samples?

http://www.mvps.org/access/forms/frm0053.htm

SHADOW

 

[timothyl]

Shadow, thanks for the response. I tried using the code from the form that has the transparent holes, I imported all the modules and the form itself when I open the imported from if works fine, I have pasted into my form all the code from the imported form, I keep geting

apiRGB RGBx3(0), lngColor, 4

apiRGB sub or function not defined, can not figure out why as again the imported form works fine, any insight into why?

 

[shadow9449]

The code is not mine and I've never used it. However, just browsing through the project, I see that there's a form called frmCombineRgn which has a function declaration for apiRGB. Do you have this in your project?

SHADOW

 

[darbid]

Hi it has been a long time since I did that. If you post an example
mdb I will have a look for you.

 

[thenman]

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I had something to add, georgedwilkinson code wasn't working for me, here is a code that is almost the same, but works.


For the Module:

Private Declare Function GetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "GetWindowLongA" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal nIndex As Long) As Long
 
Private Declare Function SetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "SetWindowLongA" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal nIndex As Long, _
   ByVal dwNewLong As Long) As Long
 
Private Declare Function SetLayeredWindowAttributes Lib "user32" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal crKey As Long, _
   ByVal bAlpha As Byte, _
   ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
 
Private Const LWA_ALPHA     As Long = &H2

Private Const GWL_EXSTYLE   As Long = -20

Private Const WS_EX_LAYERED As Long = &H80000
 
Public Sub SetFormOpacity(frm As Form, sngOpacity As Single, TColor As Long)
    Dim lngStyle As Long

    ' get the current window style, then set transparency
    lngStyle = GetWindowLong(frm.hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE)
    SetWindowLong frm.hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, lngStyle Or WS_EX_LAYERED
    SetLayeredWindowAttributes frm.hwnd, TColor, (sngOpacity * 255), LWA_ALPHA
End Sub

And in the From on the Form_Load()

Private Sub Form_load()
Dim Transp As Long
Transp = RGB(0, 0, 0) 'This is the color you want your background to be
 
Me.Detail.BackColor = Transp
 
Me.Painting = False
SetFormOpacity Me, 0.5, Transp
Me.Painting = True
End Sub

 

[thenman]

The only differences I could find were:

Private Const LWA_COLORKEY As Long = &H1

and in the SetFormOpacy sub:
SetLayeredWindowAttributes frm.hwnd, TColor, (sngOpacity * 255), LWA_ALPHA or LWA_COLORKEY

When I added the two of these to my code, the form was no longer visible, and the TColor adjusted the transparency of the controls on the form, not the form itself.

 

[regikono]

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I had something to add, georgedwilkinson code wasn't working for me, here is a code that is almost the same, but works.


For the Module:

Private Declare Function GetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "GetWindowLongA" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal nIndex As Long) As Long
 
Private Declare Function SetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "SetWindowLongA" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal nIndex As Long, _
   ByVal dwNewLong As Long) As Long
 
Private Declare Function SetLayeredWindowAttributes Lib "user32" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal crKey As Long, _
   ByVal bAlpha As Byte, _
   ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Long
 
Private Const LWA_ALPHA     As Long = &H2

Private Const GWL_EXSTYLE   As Long = -20

Private Const WS_EX_LAYERED As Long = &H80000
 
Public Sub SetFormOpacity(frm As Form, sngOpacity As Single, TColor As Long)
    Dim lngStyle As Long

    ' get the current window style, then set transparency
    lngStyle = GetWindowLong(frm.hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE)
    SetWindowLong frm.hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, lngStyle Or WS_EX_LAYERED
    SetLayeredWindowAttributes frm.hwnd, TColor, (sngOpacity * 255), LWA_ALPHA
End Sub

And in the From on the Form_Load()

Private Sub Form_load()
Dim Transp As Long
Transp = RGB(0, 0, 0) 'This is the color you want your background to be
 
Me.Detail.BackColor = Transp
 
Me.Painting = False
SetFormOpacity Me, 0.5, Transp
Me.Painting = True
End Sub

This last adjustment has worked fine in my access 2003. Thank you for your contribution guys!