Author: lauren

There seems to be some confusion about the new July CTP, and how to use it without a new build of Orcas (in fact, Orcas is just the dev environment, and you should be able to use the July framework with the June build of Orcas). In order to help clarify which build is right for you, Tom Archer has posted a thorough discussion of the differences between the different builds and how to get the right combination of tools (thanks Ashish for the tip).

The July CTP shipped today. Get it here.

The June CTP of .Net Framework 3.0 was released on Friday. One new June CTP feature that I am very excited to introduce is a new property on Window called AllowsTransparency. AllowsTransparency enables you to create those semi-transparent windows and rounded-corner windows for which many of you have been asking.

I have written a small sample to illustrate some of the things to think about when creating semi-transparent windows. The central part of the sample is the following XAML:

<Window x:Class="WindowTransparency.Window1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    Title="WindowTransparency" Height="300" Width="300"
    AllowsTransparency="True" WindowStyle="None" 
    Background="Transparent"
    >
  <Border CornerRadius="50" Background="Blue" Opacity=".7">
    <Button Click="CloseWindow" Height="30" Width="100">Close Me
    </Button>
  </Border>
</Window>

There are a few things to notice in this XAML. First is that I set Window.AllowsTransparency to true. Of course, as the name implies, this simply means that the Window may be made transparent (under the covers, it switches to using a layered window), it does not actually set the background to transparent. To achieve a transparent window, I set Window.Background to Transparent. Now that I have a transparent window surface, I can draw whatever content inside of it that I like. In this example, I’m simply using a Border with rounded corners to show that you can create rounded-corner windows and dialogs.

You’ll also notice that I have set Window.WindowStyle to None. For now, Windows with AllowsTransparency=true are not compatible with any of the other WindowStyles, and we expect that this will be fine for most scenarios (if you are using a transparent window, you probably don’t want the standard Win32 window chrome). Drawing your own Window chrome is easy (as an example, I’ve created a close button that I’ve hooked up to Window.Close()). Making your Window user-draggable is actually just as easy to do. The following code does it:

public Window1()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    MouseLeftButtonDown += new MouseButtonEventHandler
           (Window1_MouseLeftButtonDown);
}

void Window1_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, 
     MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
    DragMove();
}

You can download the full sample here.