Background in an mdi form - Xtreme Visual Basic Talk

11-23-2005, 03:47 AM

icampbell

Junior Contributor

Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: Northumberland, England

Posts: 236

Background in an mdi form

Can anyone tell me if you can have the background in an mdi form to have 2 colours merged.
By that i mean like you see in installation programs where the top half of the screen is a light blue and the bottom part is dark blue and they fade into each other.

I have tried to change the colour using the back colour pallet but it only allows me to select 1 colour.

Any advice would be helpful.

Ian.

__________________
Were all going to heaven lads, wey heyy.....

11-23-2005, 06:22 AM

mcdonnc2004 mcdonnc2004 is offline

Junior Contributor

Join Date: Dec 2003

Location: Liverpool, UK

Posts: 276

Simple bit of code will draw a gradient fill on your form:

Code:

Private Sub Form_Load()
DrawBackGround
End Sub
Private Sub DrawBackGround()
Const intBLUESTART% = 255
Const intBLUEEND% = 0
Const intBANDHEIGHT% = 2
Const intSHADOWSTART% = 8
Const intSHADOWCOLOR% = 0
Const intTEXTSTART% = 4
Const intTEXTCOLOR% = 15

Dim sngBlueCur As Single
Dim sngBlueStep As Single
Dim intFormHeight As Integer
Dim intFormWidth As Integer
Dim intY As Integer

'
'Get system values for height and width
'
intFormHeight = ScaleHeight
intFormWidth = ScaleWidth

'
'Calculate step size and blue start value
'
sngBlueStep = intBANDHEIGHT * (intBLUEEND - intBLUESTART) / intFormHeight
sngBlueCur = intBLUESTART

'
'Paint blue screen
'
For intY = 0 To intFormHeight Step intBANDHEIGHT
Line (-1, intY - 1)-(intFormWidth, intY + intBANDHEIGHT), RGB(0, 0, sngBlueCur), BF
sngBlueCur = sngBlueCur + sngBlueStep
Next intY

'
'Print 'shadowed' appname
'
CurrentX = intSHADOWSTART
CurrentY = intSHADOWSTART
ForeColor = QBColor(intSHADOWCOLOR)
Print Caption
CurrentX = intTEXTSTART
CurrentY = intTEXTSTART
ForeColor = QBColor(intTEXTCOLOR)
Print Caption
End Sub

You must set the AutoRedraw property on the form to True for it to work.

11-23-2005, 06:46 AM

icampbell

Junior Contributor

Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: Northumberland, England

Posts: 236

Yes this works great on a normal form.
But there is no autodraw on an MDI Form, so it does not run.

any other ideas ?

__________________
Were all going to heaven lads, wey heyy.....

11-23-2005, 10:50 AM

LaVolpe

Ultimate Contributor

* Expert *

Join Date: Apr 2004

Location: Illinois

Posts: 2,499

The MDI background is really another window. A somewhat simple, non-subclassing approach to fill the background with other colors or images is to draw what's needed on a memory DC and then convert the DC's bitmap to a stdPicture object; then setting that picture object to the MDIForm's.Picture property. A good example can be found at a MVPS website; however, you'll need to cut & paste some of the code; not all would be appropriate. Between similar code posted above (gradients) & the non-subclassing approach in the link's sample, you'll be able to set up your gradient background.

P.S. for the sample at the website, also extract the exe found in the zip file. You don't need to run the exe, but to run the sample in IDE, it will be looking for images inside of that exe's compiled resources.

__________________
Insomnia is a simple byproduct of "it can't be done" {Window Shaper}

Last edited by LaVolpe; 11-23-2005 at 10:55 AM.