Many times I’ve seen an effect in Adobe Flash that gradually reduces visibility of the background window, for example when you preview a video or image (in Lightbox). It would be great to have such effect in WinForms.
After searching the web for relevant solution, I’ve found a program that dims the entire screen. Obviously, this works differently, a semi-transparent bar is stretched to the screen area. I would like to find the same thing for the application window (so when we display a dialog, main form will appear slightly darker).
Any suggestions?
I answered a very similar question before, see:
WinForm Control with Opacity
The Shroud() and Unshroud() methods dim and undim the form.
You can modify that to do what you want (using a timer; instead of dimming the bitmap (see example code) you can do the dimming on Paint() and make it time-dependent.
Send me a comment if you need a code sample, I can work one out for you.