Question

I’m working on a project that requires a dashboard be overlayed ontop of 3rd party applications (the example application would be Powerpoint)

The dashboard is a simple set of WPF controls. One is a Home button in the top left corner that when clicked will return focus to the main application, a small video feed in the bottom right corner that depending on the context, will display a specific incoming video stream, and a few other custom controls.

I need to know how to draw these few controls over top of any application (but specifically PPT in presentation view) and when the user mouses over the controls, they get receive mouse events.

Answer 1

Set the properties of the Window as below:

No window, always on top, and transparency allowed.

    Background="Transparent"
    WindowStyle="None"
    Topmost="True"
    AllowsTransparency="True"

If this runs, it will display on top, only doing hit tests on the elements that are not transparent.

(Set Window dimensions to screen size)