Thread: OSD or transparent window

Hello,

I hope you can help me, because I can't find the answer: How do you make an overlay window like the office assistant.
I want to be able to draw something on top of everything else. But it has to be partly transparent.
This is exactly what the office assistant is, but I can't find how it is done.

I tried it using overlay surfaces with directdraw. But my video card doesn't support it. And this seems really odd to me, because the office assistant does work. So that must use something else than an overlay surface.
I found something a while back about making a window transparent, but that only worked for win2k and xp.

You could also call this a OSD and that is just what I want. Maybe you've seen them, not for your monitor (which probably works with hardware in the monitor) but for a keyboard with special keys or something. When you press the key, it shows an OSD (simple letters, with transparent background) telling which action will be taken.
That's just what I want...

I hope someone can help me.

Joren

I believe the function you're requesting is SetWindowRgn().

I don't know if that will cut it...
I know you can setup regions that will be transparent, but is that really the way to go if you want to make an OSD or something like the office assistant.
With the office assistant the regions would change all the time to make animation possible. But that won't be good for the speed. And in general regions aren't the best way to go.
And with the OSD thing I mean, I want to blit text with a transparent background. I don't know if you can do that with regions. Simple shapes, ok. But letters?

If anybody knows another way (or something to improve this), please let me know...

Joren

Well actually I still haven't found anything, and was recently thinking about it again. So thanks on the input.
I could indeed use the display DC. But won't that be overwritten when some other window draws in that region of the screen?
Or could I monitor drawings and redraw if neccesary?

It's worth trying...
Joren

http://www.google.com/search?q=windo...ndowrgn+bitmap

http://dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com...s/001080.shtml

http://www.codeguru.com/bitmap/bmp2rgn_tool.shtml

http://www.undu.com/Articles/990114c.html

Have Fun!