Creating Transparent Forms

A new property of forms that I think is very cool is the Opacity property. This property controls the opaqueness of the form as well as all controls on the form. The default Opacity value of 100% means that the form and its controls are completely opaque (solid), whereas a value of 0% creates a completely transparent form (no real point in that). A value of 50% then, creates a form that's between solid and invisible as shown in Figure 6.17. Microsoft Outlook 2003 and newer makes good use of opacity in its alerts that pop up to tell you when you've received an email. The Opacity of these alerts is cycled from 0 to 100, left at 100 for a short time, and then cycled back down to 0 as it disappears. You can do this in your program using a simple loop as discussed in Hour 14, "Looping for Efficiency."

Figure 6.17. Ghost forms!