Menge

http://www.ecocardio.com.br/lmmenge/dock.jpg here's a screenshot of how it alphablends. that's what i want. :P

i got directdraw to draw outside my form (all i needed to do was not have a clipping surface and it draws to the whole screen even if attached to the window)... but i couldn't manage to get it to draw an alpha blended png file (which is my desired format target). i can get direct3d to draw the alpha blended png... but only INSIDE the window.... not outside like DDraw... if i could destroy this clipping surface there are a couple other "dock" programs around which do the same thing... but the others only use GDI+. how they do it? i don't know. this one i mentioned seems to use GDI+ too... but it also uses DirectX for something (i suppose managing the pngs and forming the image?) i was thinking of rendering to a surface which would be Cleared with Color.Transparent color and then drawn the icons over... and then creating a bitmap of this surface and then drawing as the BackgroundImage of the form (which makes the form alpha-blend... but i can't manage to create a bitmap of the surface. i've already rendered to the surface... but can't get the graphics object linked to a bitmap. help? this one i mentioned seems to use GDI+ too... but it also uses DIrectX for something (i suppose managing the pngs and forming the image?)

ok i'll take a look. but... do these regions support alpha blending within the desktop? i mean... if i load a png with various alpha values, will it apply to those regions?

Is there a way to create a directx device that has no window attached to it? or just the screen? i want to make an app which uses directx and draws with an alpha channel to the screen. much like this one does: http://pwp.netcabo.pt/mobydock/highres/images/screenshot.jpg this is MobyDock , which is a clone of apple's Dock program. it uses DirectX9 and draws to the screen transparently (with alpha). the blue background is the desktop already. i want to make something similar. how to i make a directx window or device that draws this way?

well i found out that if i made a setup project and configured the setup to package the directx files and register on the client machine, that i would just work. this all seems just a tad bit too obscure and unsupported to me. weird. still, i got more problems FINDING OUT DirectInput since documentation on it is just class reference and no proper information. thx anyway. i'll make another post about my DirectInput problems hehehe

i know I need the developer runtime but installing the developer runtime was the only way i found that could possibly install managed directx! installing directx9 after having installed net framework didn't do the trick. installing directx9.0a after all that didn't do it either! what now?

"Application has generated an exception that could not be handled." as the system does not have any SDKs installed, no further info is given. i presume it's managed directx's fault. what packages are the ones that install managed directx on client, non-developer computers?

hello my first post here. and i'm having serious trouble in getting my managed directx apps to work on other people's computers. they all have: - Net Framework 1.1 (NOT SDK) - DirectX 9.0a (NOT SDK either) - Windows XP or Server 2003 and i don't want to force them to use the DirectX Developer Runtime. Is there any way to make Managed DirectX work without the Developer Runtime? thanx in advance