Developers

Omnis Technical Note TNGI0014 October 2006

Transparent Window Objects

For Omnis Studio 4 or after
By Götz Krija

There are times when you might want entry fields and other objects in a window to be transparent, for example, when you have used a picture or pattern on the background of a window. However, this is not possible if you are using a kBackpicture type of picture.

You can find a remedy by using background skins. The required bachground picture must be stored in the system table #ICONS. Then switch to the #Icons table (system classes), create a new "clipboard page" with your background picture and assign a unique ID to it.

Now go back to your window and enter the ID of your picture in the property $backgroundskin or select the picture from the dialog window under #ICONS. Then set the property $backgroundskinalign to kPALtitle, and many objects now are already shown transparent without any changes.

For other objects such as entry fields you must set the properties $style to <None> and $backgroundtheme to kGBThemeParent.