<p>I'm writing a simple app that's going to have a tiny form sitting in one corner of the screen, updating itself.</p>

<p>I'd really love for that form to be transparent and to have the transparency be user-configurable.</p>

<p>Is there any easy way to achieve this?</p>

[{'answer_id': 36576, 'author': 'Eric Haskins', 'author_id': 100, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/100', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>You can set the <code>Form.Opacity</code> property. It should do what you want.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 36577, 'author': 'Cameron MacFarland', 'author_id': 3820, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3820', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': True, 'text': '<p>You could try using the <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.form.opacity.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Opacity</a> property of the Form. Here\'s the relevant snippet from the MSDN page:</p>\n\n<pre><code>private Sub CreateMyOpaqueForm()\n   \' Create a new form.\n   Dim form2 As New Form()\n   \' Set the text displayed in the caption.\n   form2.Text = "My Form"\n   \' Set the opacity to 75%.\n   form2.Opacity = 0.75\n   \' Size the form to be 300 pixels in height and width.\n   form2.Size = New Size(300, 300)\n   \' Display the form in the center of the screen.\n   form2.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterScreen\n\n   \' Display the form as a modal dialog box.\n   form2.ShowDialog()\nEnd Sub\n</code></pre>\n'}, {'answer_id': 36578, 'author': 'Ethan Gunderson', 'author_id': 2066, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2066', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>Set <code>Form.Opacity = 0.0</code> on page load</p>\n\n<p>I set something like what your talking about on an app about a year ago.  Using a <code>While</code> loop with a small <code>Sleep</code> you can setup a nice fading effect.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 36597, 'author': 'Daniel Jennings', 'author_id': 3641, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3641', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>I don't know exactly what you mean by transparent, but if you use WPF you can set <code>AllowTransparency = True</code> on your form and then remove the form's style/border and then set the background to a color that has a zero alpha channel. Then, you can draw on the form all you want and the background will be see-through and the other stuff will be fully visible. Additionally, you could set the background to a low-opacity layer so you can half see through the form.</p>\n"}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/36563', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/305/']