Interactive Shaped Forms

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Introduction

This Demo show how to create shaped form and customized buttons using the Region, GraphicsPath and picture class. It also demonstrates using the picture control to display animated pictures.

All graphics are from Microsoft Media Player and have been resized to make the graphic files smaller.

The procedures:

1. Create a form with some background color, then set the property TransparenceKey to that color and set the FormBorderStyle to None.

2. Override the Form_Paint function

   You can do it by

   protected override void  OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)

   or add a new Handler

   this.Paint += new System.Windows.Form.PaintEventHandler(Form_Paint)

3. Using Region and GraphicsPath to set the Region that you want to display.

   im = new Bitmap("mediaPlayer.jpg"); 
   
   private void Form_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) 
   { 
      Graphics g = e.Graphics; 
   
      Rectangle mainRect = new Rectangle(0, 0, 695, 278); 
   
      Region mainRegion = new Region(mainRect); 
   
      e.Graphics.SetClip(mainRegion, CombineMode.Replace); 
   
      // Create a GraphicsPath object and add a curve. 
      GraphicsPath myPath = new GraphicsPath(); 
   
      ... 
   
      Region ExcludeRegion3 = new Region(myPath); 
   
      e.Graphics.ExcludeClip(ExcludeRegion3); 
   
      ... 
   
      e.Graphics.DrawImage(im, 0, 0, 495,278); 
   
      // Reset clipping region to infinite. 
      e.Graphics.ResetClip(); 
   } 
   

Note: Keep all the graphics in the bin/debug directory.

If you have any comments, I would love to hear about it. You can reach me at Jibin Pan.