Page 1 of 1
Allow transparency in Windows 9x/ME
Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2002 1:09 am
by Guest
A transparency option for Windows 98 SE would be a good addition.
I'm curious as to why it wasn't included in the current edition?
Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2002 4:53 am
by Nemessis
from the developers of winamp3 reguarding adding trancparency for windows9x systems into that program:
You can stop asking for this. It's basically impossible in win95/98/me.
Here's why:
The only way to fake this kind of thing would be to render the pixels from the windows behind you into your own graphics. We could do THAT, but Windows has NO way to GET the pixels from a window you are obscuring. No way at all. The reason is that in Windows' normal windowing model, windows are painted directly to the screen, always. (It might render to its own internal bitmaps or whatever, but at the OS level, it always paints directly to the screen.) UNLESS it is obscured. Then no painting occurs. So there are no bits you could grab since you're obscuring it.
Now, you could try directly blending your graphics onto the screen, but you have no way of knowing if/when a window under you changes, so parts of your window will just be erased randomly as windows under it repaint.
We've discussed this quite a lot, and it's just not gonna happen. win95/98 desktop alpha blending is just not feasible. It is an architectural limitation of the OS and its windowing model.
--Brennan
that answer applies here also.
Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2002 8:38 am
by Big-O Ryan
Thanks Nemessis, I certainly couldn't have said it better!