Transpic Control  BurdickSoft (www.burdicksoft.com)

The BurdickSoft Transpic Control is a Visual Basic developed ActiveX component that dramatically improves the ease of manipulating and animating transparent bitmaps. It works just like the standard Visual Basic PictureBox control except that it allows pictures to be displayed transparently and also contains several animation methods. The user does not have to create transparent masks to use this control. Instead, a mask color is specified which automatically converts the picture to a transparent bitmap. Transpic works with any Visual Basic recognized bitmap type including .bmp, .dib .gif, .jpg, and .wmf file types. In addition, Transpic contains several animation methods to create dazzling visual effects including dissolves and wipes. Best of all, it contains a transparent animation routine that allows flicker-free, movement of the transparent picture on a form or other container.

Using the Transpic Control

Installing the Transpic Control - Copy the transpic.ocx file to your Windows/System directory and then load/register the control in the VB IDE by going to the "Project/Components" menu and loading transpic.ocx.

Loading Images - After the control has been loaded into the VB IDE, you should see a theicon in the toolbar palette. Click and then place it on a form. To load an image, click "Picture" in the Properties Box and select the file ( .bmp, .dib .gif, .jpg, and .wmf file types are supported). The picture will load into the Transpic control and be resized according to the size of the loaded picture.

Setting the Transparent Color - There are two things the user must do to turn the loaded picture to a transparent picture. First, the "Backstyle" property must be set to "0" (this is the default value). Secondly, the user must enter or select the desired transparency color in the "Mask Color" property (the default is white).

Animation Methods - The BurdickSoft Transpic control has three classes of animation methods each with several different behaviors:

• Dissolve - This animation effect creates a speckled fade effect.
  
  Syntax
  
  object.Dissolve  Type,  Size,  Rate
  
  The Dissolve method syntax has the following object qualifier and parts:
  

  Part	Description
  Type (Integer)	0 = Dissolve out, 1 = Dissolve in
  Size (Integer)	The size of the dissolve rectangles  in pixels.The minimum size is 1.
  Rate (Single)	The dissolve speed in seconds.  Number must be greater than or  equal to 0.

  
  
• Wipe - This animation effect creates a wiping effect by painting the background over the top of the picture.
  
  Syntax
  
  object.Wipe   Direction,   Speed
  
  The Wipe method syntax has the following object qualifier and parts:
  

  Part	Description
  Direction (Integer)	1 = wipe from left, 2 = wipe from right,  3 = wipe from top, 4 = wipe from bottom  5= wipe from center
  Speed (Integer)	The speed of the wipe method in milliseconds.

  
  
• Tanimate - This animation effect allows the user to create a transparent animation move sequence
  
  Syntax
  
  object.Tanimate   coords,  steps, delay
  
  The Wipe method syntax has the following object qualifier and parts:
  

  Part	Description
  coords (num,2)	A 2 dimensional long integer array. The first  dimension is the number of steps, the second dimension contains the x and y coordinates  respectively for each move. Each x, y  coordinate pair is specified using pixel  coordinates.
  steps (Integer)	The number of steps in the animation  sequence. This should be less than or equal to the first dimension of the coords array.
  delay (Integer)	The delay time in milliseconds between  animation steps

  
  
  Notes: The Tanimate method takes an array of coordinate pairs that correspond to the top
  left corner location of the transpic control. For example, using a three step move:
  
  Dim coords (3,2) as Long
  Dim steps as Integer
  Dim delay as Integer
  
  coords(1,1) = 10: coords(1,2) = 40            ' first X, Y pair
  coords(2,1) = 35: coords(2,2) = 60            ' second X, Y pair
  coords(3,1) = 100: coords(3,2) = 75          ' third X,Y pair
  
  You should pass the array using the following syntax:
  
  tanimate coords, steps, delay         or alternatively you could use:      tanimate coords( ), steps, delay
  
  Either notation works for passing the coords array.
  

Contact BurdickSoft:

• web: www.burdicksoft.com
• email: dburdick@burdicksoft.com