Windows 2000 background icon transparency

[XibaD]

Anyone knows any trick to do it? From reg hacks to system file hacks... but NOT any resident progs or anything like that. It's to integrate it with HFSLIP.

Thanks

[WildBill]

On bare Win2k, I don't know, but I'm investigating the possibility of doing it with TClock3. From what I've learned so far it will probably require that Active Desktop be enabled, though. With AD I can get to the bare desktop background (which I would need to do it properly), whereas without it I can only get to the desktop after everything has been painted on it (so far, at least). The one thing I really need to figure out is how to paint an alpha-blended icon in Win2k. The standard icon-painting call won't do it.

Edit: Some quick digging on MSDN shows that the only way to do it the "standard" way (using the ImageList drawing routines) is with comctl32.dll version 6, which only comes with XP and isn't redistributable. I'm digging to see if I can get to the bitmap data for the icon, which might allow me to use the standard AlphaBlend() call to paint an alpha-blended icon onto the desktop (AlphaBlend is available on Win98 or greater). I should point out, though, that this would only work for the *desktop*, since that's what I'm overriding. It would have no effect on other listviews, so the value might be dubious.

Well I've been at it all night and it doesn't seem possible so far. I can get the images out of the image list just fine, but all alpha information seems to be lost

Edited August 10, 2006 by WildBill

[XibaD]

Well, thanks buddy, thanks a lot. It would be great to do with a little hack, to improve visuals of W2K, and to establish that WXP is the SAME that W2K with more drivers and skins ¬¬