I have a form filled with a TImage. I put over this a TGridPanel. If themes are enabled in Windows 7 the TGirdPanel appears with transparency. If themes are disabled (no visual styles) the TGridPanel loses transparency and hides the part it ocupies. I use Delphi XE2
Is there any workaround for this?
That's a basic fact of life for panels. It's not special to the TGridPanel, you will see the same effect for any control derived from TCustomPanel. The transparency is only supported when the application is themed.
The grid panel is just a convenient way to layout your controls. If you want to support running unthemed then the simplest solution is to remove the TGridPanel and layout your controls manually. That's pretty much trivial to do. Handle the OnResize event of the control that currently contains the panel, and position your controls as desired.
Related
I have two controls on my form.
TWebBrowser with Align set to Client
TMemo with Align set to None
I want to display TMemo on top of TWebBrowser for a particular scenario and for that am using Memo.BringToFront but it does nothing.
Am I missing something?
TWebBrowser Is a particular firemonkey Control. Firemonkey control are "paint" according to their z-order on a openGL surface (ie: the form). but TwebBrowser is a native control that is draw on another surface that is placed on the top of the form, hidding in this way everything back to it.
The only way you can do is to show you memo inside another window on the top of the TwebBrowser. for this you can use a native Memo. As far as i know their is only one native memo implemented on android (delphi already have some that work on ios/windows) it's https://github.com/Zeus64/alcinoe
Using C++ Builder 10.2, VCL & VCL Styles...
I have a TPageControl that has TFrames on each of its TTabsheets. One of these frames contains some TEdit controls that show data read from a device. After the reading is acquired and the frame is updated, the system may create a screenshot of this frame and store it in a jpeg file.
Since the TTabsheet in the TPageControl with the TEdit controls may not be visible when the jpeg is created, the jpeg may not have the text contents of the TEdit controls painted. This has given me fits.
I have found that by using a TStaticText that is styled, the text appears in the jpeg. This seems to be due to the fact that TStaticTextStyleHook.Paint (in VCL.StdCtrls.pas) draws the control itself rather than letting Windows do it.
There are two problems with using TStaticText. Selecting the SystemStyle choice (Windows) causes TStaticTextStyleHook.Paint to skip painting the control itself and delegates to Windows (I think). Also, the appearance of TStaticText isn't exactly what I want, but I may have to live with it.
Is Windows refusing to paint TEdit control contents because the parent is not Visible?
Is there a way to force Windows to paint the TEdit controls in this situation?
UpdateWindow() and RedrawWindow() does not work.
Everything I've found says I can't do this with Delphi 2's TMainMenu but if somebody here has managed it somehow, I'd really like to know the trick. I found code that changes the System menu font size but none that confines the change to only the application. Anyone here know how to do this or do I have to just accept Delphi 2's tiny menu font size that appears on today's large screen monitors? (Moving the app to an upgraded Delphi is not the answer I need ;-)
The only way to achieve per application custom menu fonts is with an owner drawn menu. Delphi 2 does not support owner drawn menu items directly in the VCL properties of a TMainMenu component. This support was introduced only in Delphi 4.
You could still implement an owner drawn menu, but it would involve implementing them using standard Windows API techniques, and handling the required messages on the forms which own the menus involved. It is not especially difficult but not as straightforward as the event based implementation available in Delphi 4 and later.
You can still use a TMainMenu to define your menus but in your application you would then need to programmatically set the owner draw flag on the menu items and handle the resulting messages appropriately. Doing this, you will need to handle all aspects of drawing the menu - you cannot simply set/change the font and leave the system to draw the menu items. You may also need to provide additional handling for any keyboard shortcuts you have set up.
If this is a viable approach then information on implementing owner drawn menus at the API level can be found here.
When TWebBrowser control is too small it becomes greyed.
If TWebBrowser control is aligned to alClient and there are no other controls on the form I can make it really small (50x10 for example). However, when I add other controls like panels, toolbar, main menu and so on which all float on top (alTop) - the more controls I add it seems, the smaller window of TWebBrowser I can get without greying itself. When window is resized to become larger, then it becomes ungreyed again.
In this example I placed TToolBar with 2 buttons aligned to alTop, and TWebBrowser aligned to alClient. If I make toolbar invisible, I can make web browser really small. However, with toolbar visible it greys itself. The more controls I add it seems to have less and less usable space before greying itself.
As you can see in last example web browser is even smaller than in second example but still visible and everything is the same except there is no toolbar on top. Same applies if used on Windows 7 or 8 or with Internet Explorer 10 or 11.
The examples here are just examples. I don't have a problem with having 100x100 control as minimum size. The problem is that when I place quite a bit of controls then it doesn't allow me to have smaller control than 550x250, which is quite large.
Can anyone enlighten me why other controls have an effect on web browser not being able to use smaller size when it can do this perfectly normally when there are no other controls on form?
Many thanks to bummi in the comments up there for finding a following workaround:
It appears that the problem with greyed control doesn't appear in XE3 and later but can be reproduced in earlier versions like XE2, XE, 2010 and 2009.
For these earlier versions the workaround is to place TWebBrowser on another control such as TPanel and then align both controls to alClient (so that the TWebBrowser fills entire TPanel and TPanel fills entire area previously filled by TWebBrowser). Of course, alignment here is not an issue but the workaround is just to place one control on another.
The same works for TEmbeddedWB and probably other controls that host Internet Explorer ActiveX control.
When placed on container control like TPanel, web browser can be resized to any size without the problem described above.
Standard Delphi controls (panels, buttons etc.) all have this bevel effect (white line on top and on the left) that gives them a 3D feel but today it makes them look old fashioned.
Is there a way to remove this "3D look" at least in Delphi 7?
Some controls have a Ctl3D property that you can turn off.
For a TPanel, you can also turn off its Bevel... properties.
What you really should do instead is enable Visual Styles in your app so it has a themed look on Windows XP and later. Delphi 7 did not natively support Visual Styles, but you can use Mike Lischke's XP Theme Manager component to handle that (it was incorporated directly into later VCL versions).