AutoHotkey Community

[MiamiGuy]

I have to say "BRAVO", I'm sure a lot of us had been waiting anxiously for the moment we could use something like this in AHK.
I've been using autohotkeys for about a year, and I am getting a lot better at THE BASICS, but I'm still learning, so forgive me is if I sound like a noob.

I tried the code and I was very impressed at how the PNG looks, if you get creative with Photoshop and make a png graphic that looks like glass with a shadow behind it, (Vista style) it looks awesome. However, from reading the post I understand you cant add controls on a layered window because they wont show. It was suggested that two GUI's could be used, one with the PNG and another with the controls, and I guess that could be a work around, but I don't even know how I would go about doing that.

If someone could elaborate a little on that, or point me to some additional documentation I could read and get more familiarized with all this, it would be wonderful.

I haven't tried it yet, but one brainstorm idea I had was to use the DOC function to dock a widow with controls on top of the window with the png, and then set the background color of the window with the controls to be transparent with Winset Transcolor , but not sure how or if that would work. Another thought I had was perhaps use the SETPARENT function to set the gui with controls as the child of the layered GUI with the PNG, but again, not sure if that would work either.

[maximina]

Excellent work chaps! This solution is getting book-marked.

[Lexikos]

[maximina]

Now, if only someone could figure out how to change the transparency of the alpha-blended image on the fly...

[Lexikos]

I've known how right from the get go.

[MiamiGuy]

I really think PNG support for AutoHotkey needs to be worked on and developed a bit further, specially now that Vista's graphics are pretty much mostly PNG's.
I know a lot of us using this language would appreciate it if we could make desktop gadgets and such, using autohotkey, and still get shadows behind the gui and all the other effects you can get with a PNG.

[tic]

Again...thank you lexikos and sean. I am writing something truly great to demonstrate nicly examples of how this can be used, but I really need a way to put controls onto it. I tried using majikinators dock, but it is too unstable and not suited to handling controls in this way. you can add one or two controls, but problems arise, especially as they all must be docked to 1 hwnd and you cannot choose which you want them to dock to. I would appreciate any suggestions on how to get a few controls on. thanks

[Lexikos]

It sounds like you are trying to dock each control to the per-pixel GUI. What you should do is add the controls to a GUI, use WinSet TransColor to make its background invisible, and dock it to the per-pixel GUI.

[tic]

problem is i want all the transparencies, and im trying to put pngs onto pngs. I just wanted to demonstrate how good your code actually was at creating guis, but unfortunately the docking method is too cumbersome. I have this....




but it is all flickery and jumpy as i want the coverart to be the draggable part, so everything muct be docked to that, but then everything jostles for position.

hopefully a good fix can be found, as this will revolutionize ahk guis, if you can just make the whole gui and any control a png. I think youll agree that it looks much more professional than a standard gui.

Thanks...

[Lexikos]

Ah, so by "controls" you weren't talking about the conventional windows kind. I've been meaning to write a "layered GUI framework" for AutoHotkey, but haven't had the time (i.e. too many other projects to finish first.)

Basically, for it to work well, you need to draw the "controls" directly onto a bitmap, which would then be applied to the window with UpdateLayeredWindow. The biggest problem is that GDI does not support alpha blending, so to draw text, shapes, etc. you need to either use GDI+ or manually calculate the alpha data (which is always fun! )

Luckily, AlphaBlend can be used to draw bitmaps onto bitmaps; obviously with alpha blending. Like with GDI functions, you need to create a device context (CreateCompatibleDC) and select the bitmap into it (SelectObject). However, I think AlphaBlend() expects the bitmap to have pre-multiplied alpha (i.e. the RGB values of each pixel are pre-multiplied by the alpha component.) I haven't managed to get that to look quite right...

If you plan on going ahead with this, I'd suggest doing a few GDI/GDI+ tutorials first, and perhaps looking at any existing AutoHotkey scripts that use GDI or GDI+.


Alternatively, you might be able to remove some "jostling" by replacing Dock with OnMessage - since the GUI is under your control, you should be able to simply handle WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING (0x46) and move the child windows from there. I think WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING is sent before the window moves, so it would probably be more responsive.

[tic]

thanks very much lexikos. could you please help on the registercallback though

[Lexikos]

You don't need RegisterCallback. As I said, use WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING. Here's an example:

[tic]

mmm whats going wrong here....

[tic]

Ok. using methods I have used for tray bars, I could make nice looking controls, but it would be nice to be able to use icons rather than pngs, as theres all that compression and other stuff.

Why is it that

[ahklerner]