Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Chris Lockwood — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:43:23 GMT

I really like this, and surprisingly easy to implement.

However in my dual monitor set-up I get some odd behaviour, when I view the project on my primary screen the transparency form displays on my secondary monitor... Strange!

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Renaud Bompuis — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:54:21 GMT

To Chris and others:

On the frmTransparent form, also set:

- Auto Center to true (avoids issues with mutliple monitors)

- ScrollBars to none (otherwise a portion of the screen remains visible at the bottom in some cases)

Nice and great effect!

Thanks Rob.

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Khuzema — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:01:28 GMT

Its really useful tip and really easy to implement with awesome effect.

Renaud - Thanks for AutoCenter/Scrollbar tip I was facing the same issue with multi-monitor.

keep more of this coming...

regards

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Khuzema — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:05:18 GMT

Renaud - you can add to list Navigation button also which should be no

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

robcooper — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:28:13 GMT

Thanks to Renaud and Khuzema for the tips on setting additional properties of the form. Glad to hear you are enjoying this!

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Mike — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:09:57 GMT

Thanks guys, this is exactly what I needed.

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Toffee — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:32:05 GMT

The effect works great, but I was wandering if anyone has a method for only creating the lightbox effect within the Access program window instead of the whole screen?

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Renaud Bompuis — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:00:11 GMT

To Toffee:

Add a new module and copy-paste the following into it:

'-------------------------

Type RECT

x1 As Long

y1 As Long

x2 As Long

y2 As Long

End Type

Declare Function GetWindowRect Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long, rectangle As RECT) As Boolean

Declare Function MoveWindow Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal x As Long, ByVal y As Long, ByVal width As Long, ByVal height As Long, ByVal repaint As Boolean) As Boolean

'-------------------------

Now change the frmTransparent's Resize event:

Private Sub Form_Resize()

Me.Painting = False

Dim r As RECT

GetWindowRect Application.hWndAccessApp, r

MoveWindow Me.hwnd, r.x1, r.y1, (r.x2 - r.x1), (r.y2 - r.y1), True

SetFormOpacity Me, 0.7

Me.Painting = True

End Sub

Make sure the frmTransparent settings are:

--> AutoCenter: No <--!!

- Default View: Single Form

- BorderStyle: none

- ScrollBars: neither

- Record Selector: No

- Navigation Buttons: No

The frmTransparent should now open to cover the main Access window only.

Works fine on multiple monitors and even if the main form is partially outside the desktop.

One thing to be careful with this effect is that if your application is accessible through Remote Desktop, the RDP clients may not support transparency and will instead see an opaque window.

You can use the following to detect if you're running in a Remote Terminal Desktop client:

left(Environ$("SESSIONNAME"), 3) = "RDP"

If this is true, then don't show the frmTransparent form.

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Joe Dowski — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:49:05 GMT

Hi,

I love the effect. However, what values do I need to adjust to change the level of transparency in my form ? I'd like to lighten it up a bit.

Thanks again very much for the tip !

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

robcooper — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:24:06 GMT

Joe,

To change the transparency level, change the value passed to SetFormOpacity from 0.7 to something smaller. I've tried 0.5 (50% opacity) and it looks pretty cool as well.

Hope this helps,

Rob

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

robcooper — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:36:30 GMT

Renaud

Your follow up post to this is really great! I tend to use a class module for my own implementation so I'm working on a follow up to this where I'm encapsulting the new code into a class to make it easier to use.

Rob

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

JoeOxfordCT — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:10:00 GMT

Rob,

I apologize for being thick headed but I can't find where you're setting the forms opacity to 0.7, nevermind changing it to 0.5....?

Sorry...

Joe

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

robcooper — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:47:33 GMT

Hi Joe,

No worries - it is called from the Form_Resize event of frmTransparent:

Private Sub Form_Resize()

Me.Painting = False

DoCmd.Maximize

SetFormOpacity Me, 0.5

Me.Painting = True

End Sub

Rob

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Renaud Bompuis — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:51:51 GMT

thanks Rob.

I did a sample database showing off the concept.

My post on this is on blog (just click my name aboce this comment to get to the article)

It would be nice to see your own improvements of this by making it a class helper.

Strangely enough, Mark Miller talked about that kind of stuff (What makes great UI) on the last show of DotNetRocks.

Check it out it's both interesting and funny (look up dotnetrocks, show #338).

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Thomas Wortig — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:00:58 GMT

Thx Rob, great concept.

However, testing it I ran into the problem (perhaps caused by my relative inexperience, so bear with me):

When I click on the dimmed area around the lightbox form frmTransparent gets the focus pushing the foreground form into the background, which makes it non-responsive.

How to prevent this?

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Thomas Wortig — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:04:19 GMT

Never mind, found it myself.

The modal-property did the trick.

Sorry for posting prematurely ...

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

robcooper — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:50:32 GMT

Thanks Renaud - I'll check that out.

Thomas - thanks for the feedback! Glad you got it working.

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Jose Cardona — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:54:30 GMT

Hello! Please don’t forget the Microsoft Access Project (.ADP) developers. In addition, MS Access Project don’t recognize the data type bigint when connect to MS SQL Server 2005. Thanks for read this and remember us! We feel a little orphaned.

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

Joe — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:38:51 GMT

Hi Rob,

I've implement the effect on one form but I'm getting some users where when they call the form, (I'll call it Form1) that opens the frmTransparent up, Form1 is behind frmTransparent and greyed out along with everything else on the screen. It's weird because they don't get this all the time.....In fact I was having trouble believing it until I saw it happen with my own eyes on another user's machine.....it's not everytime...just sometimes. In my example Form1 has both Popup & Modal properties set to yes.

re: Modal Dialogs with Transparent Backgrounds

robcooper — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:42:19 GMT

Hi Joe,

Does the frmTransparent form have the Popup property set to Yes?

Follow up to Transparency Forms

Access Team Blog — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:47:26 GMT

Renaud posted some comments to the previous post about transparency forms and made some really cool enhancements