How to make front the panel transparent while certain control still visible?

[lshi]

I'm trying to make a countdown vi as attached. I want the whole thing to be transparent with only the number visible. However making the FP transparent means every controls/indicator will be transparent. So how to leave certain control/indicator unaffected? Or are there better ways to do it?

Thanks,

Lei 

[tst]

You can make a specific color in the front panel transparent if you don't mind making a call to the Windows API. I posted an example here, but I believe in that case it's using a constant for the color. You can get the details yourself by reading the function's documentation in the MSDN.

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

Wow, it works!

Andrey.

[lshi]

Hey Andrey,

    Can you save it in 8.5?

Thanks,

Lei 

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

saved for LV 8.5

[lshi]

Amazing! Though absolutely no ideal how it works! Never dealt with API so far. Need some research ...

Thank you both!

Lei 

[hutha]

it really really amazing thing. so cool app. i just try to do this thing. thks "Andrey Dmitriev" for post it here.

[muks]

Andrey,

Can you attach it for lv 8.0?

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

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muks wrote:

Andrey,

Can you attach it for lv 8.0?

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No, sorry, I haven't 8.2 on my PC for downgrade.

Here is the screenshot:

The main idea is to make front panel completely white, and then using white as color key for transparency. 

Andrey.

[tst]

Here's the VI in 8.0. For those who want an earlier version, you can just open the example in the thread I linked to earlier.

The input which is 00FFFFFF in the example is what the determines the transparency color. FFFFFF is white.