.netwinformstransparencywindows-vista

Reshaping the "glass" in Windows Vista


In Windows Vista, all standard window borders are translucent with some sort of a glass distortion effect on whatever is under them. This glass effect can permeate other areas of the window -- such as surrounding the address and search bars in Windows Explorer or the playback controls in Windows Media Player. What if I want to do this in my .NET Windows Forms application as well? Is anyone aware of some sort of API call that you can use to control the area of this effect?


Solution

  • You have to P/Invoke from dwmapi.dll

    http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2006/06/vista-glass-in-c_17.html

    However, this is not officially supported by Winforms, and the general consensus seems to be that the best way to get glass in a .NET application is to use WPF instead.