Background Images on Screens

Post by **Susan Smith** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:03 pm

Hi all,

For a background image on a child window, can you use a GIF with a transparent backgound? This is for a BACKGROUND that is specified in the window's open statement. Even though I have verified that I created my transparent background GIF correctly, the transparent part is displaying as WHITE in BR. In the 3 different graphics programs that I checked it in, the transparent background is correct (shows as a checkerboard pattern). Is that the best I can do in BR or is there a trick?

-- Susan

John · Post by **John** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:13 pm

I do not believe that animated graphics are supported either. (yet)

Kevin Klappstein · Post by **Kevin Klappstein** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:26 pm

Try a .png instead of a gif. I know that the transparency works for sure on the main window with a png; I haven't tried it on a child window.

Post by **Susan Smith** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:30 pm

Thanks Kevin. That was the trick. The PNG worked.

Thanks!

-- Susan

Post by **Susan Smith** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:59 pm

A followup question about background images:

Do the rest of you who use them find that if you drag your BR screen around the screen at all (and sometimes even if you don't), the BR screen starts doing really squirrely graphic things - duplicating parts of the screen and just generally making a ginormous mess?

My background graphic is very simple. It colors the top half of the BR screen one color and the bottom half in another color (actually transparent on the bottom). The Rinput statement spans both halves so I can't treat this as two windows to get the coloring that I want. But this weird graphic behavior is disturbing.

If I eliminate the background graphic and drag the screen around the same as I did before, everything behaves fine. This isn't like that slow redraw speed that we used to see in BR which would require that the screen "catch up" in its redrawing. In this case, it NEVER catches up or fixes itself. It makes this background graphic of mine unusable. After spending several hours on it, I think I'll just go back to the drawing board. But I am curious as to whether anyone else has noticed this. I'm using 4.2d.

-- Susan

Kevin Klappstein · Post by **Kevin Klappstein** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:06 pm

The only times I have a redraw problem is when the console window is open. We use a background image with transparency at our main menu and haven't had a problem in 4.17, 4.18 or 4.20

gtisdale · Post by **gtisdale** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 5:30 pm

Try 4.2d+ it fixed some off screen stuff and may have fixed the behavior you're speaking of.