ArtenSUITE Part 13: Splash Screens and Transparency

ArtenSUITE
A Development Journal
Part 13: Splash Screens and Transparency

I’ve spent a few hours working on the splash screen for my application. What I’ve done now is create an irregularly shaped window, based on my company logo. This can be seen in the screenshot below:



As the image for the splash screen is read from the disk and then rendered in real time, if there is any sort of error it instead opens the original splash screen, kind of a ‘Plan B’ :-)



I’ve also been working with transparency. People tend to have strong views on whether transparent windows are a good thing or a bad thing, whatever, I like to give people choice. Therefore each window within ArtenSUITE can have its own level of transparency set at runtime. This transparency level is then written to the local cache database along with the window size and position, and is then used next time the window is opened. This seems a good solution to me, allowing more windows to be open and viewable by varying the window transparency. The transparency level is set using an screen slider situated at the bottom of each window. An example on MacOSX shown below and below that is an example from Windows Vista:






"See things as they are and write about them. Don’t waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know." - Real Live Preacher

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