AutoHotkey Community

[songsoverruins]

Dear fellow coders,

So, it's easy to make a window transparent, for example...

[txquestor]

Hi songsoverruins

What you want to do has been asked a number of times.

There are various solutions depending on EXACTLY what you want to do.

Vxe suggested

[songsoverruins]

Hi txquestor, thanks for all the suggestions. I don't think they quite cover what I mean though. The point is that I want the "Save As..." dialog box to become transparent, but _not_ the Edit1 control (which is where you specify the filename).

Making the dialog box transparent is easy as I said, but to then change the transparency of the Edit1 control again, so as to make that opaque is not possible with Winset, nor with transcolor. What I have in mind is actually the opposite of what transcolor does.

Please note, I am also not talking about GUis created by AutoHotkey itself. It probably would be much easier to achieve in that case. I'm talking about dialog boxes in programmes (like notepad or word or... whatever) that you call up when you want to open a file or do a "save as..."

I will poke around with this GDI though, I have not used this in my scripting before and it seems what I want requires more than just a simple command
_________________
For the music lover who can sit and enjoy the sound of someone else's evolving nightmare.

[Roland]

How about a different approach:

[txquestor]

Besides GDI the only other suggestion is using Window API to
control Transparency.

Look for C#, C++ or VB projects that someone has already written
to make a control transparent.

Then convert it to AHK through the Win API or DllCall functions.

There are WinAPI calls using the STANDARD windows dialog box.
Go to MSDN to search for keywords on your topics of interest

Once you find something that fits. Then search Autohotkey forum for
more specifics on how to use the Win Api and DllCall functions.

Good Luck
_________________

"Man's quest for knowledge is an expanding series whose limit is infinity"

[songsoverruins]

Hello again and thanks for the suggestions. After some doodling I came up with two workarounds / solutions

Solution 1 is what Roland already suggests, that is query for the size and position of the Edit1 control and then resize the whole window down to just the Edit1 control. Simple and effective.

Solution 2, is really more of a workaround. Query for the size and position of the Edit1 control and spawn a white GUI without a title bar that is the size of the Edit1 control on the position of the Edit1 control.

Initially it didn't work for me as dialog boxes are part of their parent window (e.g. notepad) and either those two sit on top of your little GUI, or your little GUI sits on top of them all, but you can't squeeze it in between. Some toying with WinSet did the trick.

Try this code on any dialog box with an Edit1 control (e.g. the one you call up with Ctrl+o). I admit it's not perfect, e.g. it will mess up as soon as you start moving around your dialog box, but for me it does the trick alright

[txquestor]

Great simplle workaround!

Suggest a couple mods.

On script exit reset Transparent to Normal Window

Limit the scripts action to ONLY window & controls intended for Transparency.
_________________

"Man's quest for knowledge is an expanding series whose limit is infinity"

[songsoverruins]

Hi Txquestor,

Agreed, actually I have only posted the relevant part of the script now. It is bound to a hotkey and made specific to a few dialog boxes in the script I have running here
_________________
For the music lover who can sit and enjoy the sound of someone else's evolving nightmare.

[Lexikos]

[songsoverruins]

Hey Lexikos,

Thanks for the tip about docking, I'll have to look into that as it might come in handy for other parts of my main script too.

And yes, I know the expression assignment operator. I think it's more a habit that I use the first method. Is there actually any advantage of one over the other? (Other than I guess being more easy to read and understand...)
_________________
For the music lover who can sit and enjoy the sound of someone else's evolving nightmare.

[Lexikos]