Ch 10 Splash Screen

zavodney · November 7th, 2011, 12:10 AM

Your SplashScreen gave me an idea to fancy up a program I was rewriting for Windows Forms. I decided I would have the SplashScreen change from invisible to visible. That works fine on my desktop running Vista. Since this will run on my netbook (Win 7 Starter) and/or my laptop (XP) I ran this on both of them and my wife's desktop (XP). I got 3 different results on 4 computers. Vista worked normally, Win 7 Starter and XP on my wife's desktop gave me the fuchsia border until full opacity was reached and then it disappeared. The laptop (XP) had the fuchsia border even after the full opacity was reached. The about screen showed no fuchsia at all (4 computers). All Windows updates have been applied. Your SplashScreen program runs fine on all 4 computers. Any suggestions besides Jack Daniels??

I set the tmrOpacity interval to 20

Code:

 Public Sub ShowSplash()

        Me.TopMost = True           ' Keep on top of main form.

        ' Set the Opacity to 0 and display
        Me.Opacity = 0
        Me.Show()

        ' Enable the Opacity timer
        Me.tmrOpacity.Enabled = True

    End Sub

    Private Sub tmrOpacity_Tick(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles tmrOpacity.Tick

        ' Make the splash screen become visible
        Me.Opacity += 0.01

        If Me.Opacity = 1 Then

            ' Disable the opacity timer
            Me.tmrOpacity.Enabled = False

            ' Enable the unload timer
            Me.tmrUnload.Enabled = True

        End If
    End Sub

Rod Stephens · November 7th, 2011, 11:45 AM

The most first thing that comes to mind is you should probably remove the form's borders and control box. They might be handled differently than the rest of the form.

If you did that and it still doesn't work, you could try setting the form's Region so it can only draw in its interior. Take a look at the examples here:

http://www.vb-helper.com/index_api.html#regions

You can use the GraphicsPath object's AddRectangle method to restrict the region to a rectangle inside the form.

(If you have trouble, let me know and I'll write an example, but I'm fighting some computer problems today.)

zavodney · November 8th, 2011, 12:06 AM

This program is using the Transparency Key to render the fuchsia rectangle invisible. When I was having a problem getting the program to work the way I wanted it to I copied your Splash Screen program which works fine on all of my computers. I then added a second timer to control the opacity. That is when the problem occurs on my other computers. The fuchsia background color doesn't become transparent until full opacity is reached. I tried decrementing the opacity to see if that would work. When the opacity is being changed the background is not becoming transparent on my other computers. I even ran Visual Studio on my netbook and the background was visible while the opacity was changing. I changed the label text to fuschia and those completely disappeared, even while the opacity changed, but not the background. I guess I can live without the opacity changing as I have some other features I need to figure out how to accomplish. Thanks anyway.

Keith Z.

Rod Stephens · November 8th, 2011, 02:13 AM

Hi Keith,

If you want to send me the project, I'll take a look.

Rod Stephens · November 10th, 2011, 03:08 AM

Hi Keith,

Well, I'm not sure but this does seem like a buggy feature these days. I had the problem with the background visible until Opacity = 1.

This article says TransparencyKey doesn't work if the system's color depth is greater than 24 bits:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822495

My system is set up for 32 bit color so that's probably my problem. It could be yours, too. I don't know why my older example would work for you.

Instead of using TransparencyKey, you could set the form's region. See this example:

http://www.vb-helper.com/howto_net_set_form_region.html

The attached example (which is in VB 2008, because that's what I had handy) does this. The ellipse doesn't quite fit the image on the form because it is centered (see the BackgroundImageLayout property) and the ellipse doesn't quite go to the edges of the image. You can fiddle with that if you like to make it fit perfectly. Or you could just make the whole background part of the ellipse image be blue and let the region clip it instead of worrying about TransparencyKey.

Here's the key code:

Code:

' Set the form's region to an ellipse.
Private Sub dlgSplash_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
    ' Make a GraphicsPath to define the Region.
    Dim path As New System.Drawing.Drawing2D.GraphicsPath()
    path.AddEllipse(Me.ClientRectangle)

    ' Convert into a Region.
    Dim rgn As New Region(path)

    ' Restrict the form to the region.
    Me.Region = rgn
End Sub

I hope that helps.

zavodney · November 10th, 2011, 12:38 PM

Thank you for your answer. Right now I have the program running with just a plain splash screen (sigh). I'll play with this some more to make my splash screen change opacity. First I want to finish up my first book, your Visual Basic Programming 24-Hour Trainer. I've been reading this book at lunch and have been enjoying it. Thanks for 2 great books and thank you for looking at this question.

Keith Z.