Short of grabbing and manipulating a professional setup routine's background,
how do I get a *SMOOTH* faded blue background on a form?

You know the sort - bright blue at the top gradually fading to black at the
bottom, which redraws when you resize the window.

All my attempts so far have resulted in a horribly dithered effort, consisting
of less and less blue dots in bands down the screen.

I want smooth 256 shades. I know it's possible, but HOW?????

Any help here or via email would be gladly appreciated.

Thanks,

matt.
--

-------------------------------
BSc.Software Engineering Year 4
De Montfort University  
Leicester, UK              

Const INSIDE_SOLID = 6
Const COPY_PEN = 13
Const PIXELS = 3
Dim i as Integer

DrawStyle = INSIDE_SOLID
DrawMode = COPY_PEN
DrawWidth = 2
ScaleMode = PIXELS
ScaleHeight = 256

For i = 0 To 255
 Line (0, i)-(Me.Width, i + 1), RGB(0, 0, 255 - i), B
Next i

I think it looks dithered whatever you do.

--
Newbiehood is not a period of time, it's a way of life.

http://www.sn.no/~balchen/
ftp://ftp.sn.no/user/balchen/

[snip]

1. Create a 1x1 pixel .BMP with all the shades of blue in its palette.
   I used Paint Shop Pro to grab an area of Microsoft's Video For Windows
   Setup screen, and resized the image to 1x1 pixel.

2. Set the picture property of the form to the .BMP you have just created.
   (the .BMP is around 1080 bytes in size so this won't slow anything down).
   This alters the palette of the form to contain the shades of blue.

3. Write a bit of code that looks a bit like this:

   Sub Form_PaintBlue()
   Dim i As Integer
   Dim blueheight as Integer
     Me.ScaleMode = 3  'pixel
                 blueheight = Me.ScaleHeight \ 256
     For i = 0 To 255
       Me.Line (0,i*blueheight)-Step(Me.ScaleWidth,blueheight),RGB(0,0,255-i),BF
     Next
   End

4. To print some "3d" text, the code looks a bit like this:

   Sub Form_Print (ByVal x As Single, ByVal y As Single, ByVal text As String)

   Me.FontName = "Arial"
   Me.FontBold = True
   Me.FontSize = 24

   Me.CurrentX = x+2
   Me.CurrentY = y+2
   Me.ForeColor = &H0&  'black
   Me.Print text

   Me.CurrentX = x
   Me.CurrentY = y
   Me.ForeColor = &HFFFFF&  'yellow (i think)
   Me.Print text

         End

5. Now, in your Form_Paint you just have:

   Form_Paint
     Form_Paintblue
     Form_Print 16,16,"Here is some text"
   End

Thanks everyone who helped me. I hope this hopes those of you
who posted supplementary questions!

matt.
--

-------------------------------
BSc.Software Engineering Year 4
De Montfort University  
Leicester, UK              

Does anyone know how to do this on an MDI?

There were several messages last year about this topic.  I put together
a benchmark with 3 different approaches.  The VB3 source code is in

http://www.win.net/netcadet/vb

the file is shade.zip

HTH

Bill Mitchell
Louisville, KY

http://www.win.net/netcadet