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How to stop excess flickering implementing gradient shading on a form?
Hello,
I have implemented gradient shading on the forms in my program using a method I have found on a number of sites:
Protected Overrides Sub OnPaint(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.Paint
If My.Settings.Gradient_Shadi
Dim formGraphics As Graphics = e.Graphics
Dim gradientBrush As New LinearGradientBrush(New Point(0, 0), New Point(0, Height), My.Settings.GradientColor_
formGraphics.FillRectangle
End Sub
This worked, but I found that in order to have the same shading on pages within a tab control on that form, I had to implement the following code:
Private Sub tbpOptimizer_Paint(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.Paint
Handles tbpOptimizer.Paint
Dim rect As New System.Drawing.Rectangle(0
Dim g As Graphics = e.Graphics
Dim gradientBrush As New LinearGradientBrush(New Point(0, 0), New Point(0, sender.Height), My.Settings.GradientColor_
g.FillRectangle(gradientBr
End Sub
This does work, but at times, the form flickers for a few seconds before the painting is done. In trying to figure out what is happening, I found that the Paint event for the tab above fired about 80 times when that tab was selected! I assume that is the cause of the flickering, because other tabs on the same Tab Control have their Paint event fired fewer times, and they flicker less. But why would a tab page have to fire so many times? And, more importantly, is there a better way for me to implement gradient shading onto my program screens?
Thank you in advance.
Vijay
I have implemented gradient shading on the forms in my program using a method I have found on a number of sites:
Protected Overrides Sub OnPaint(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.Paint
If My.Settings.Gradient_Shadi
Dim formGraphics As Graphics = e.Graphics
Dim gradientBrush As New LinearGradientBrush(New Point(0, 0), New Point(0, Height), My.Settings.GradientColor_
formGraphics.FillRectangle
End Sub
This worked, but I found that in order to have the same shading on pages within a tab control on that form, I had to implement the following code:
Private Sub tbpOptimizer_Paint(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.Paint
Handles tbpOptimizer.Paint
Dim rect As New System.Drawing.Rectangle(0
Dim g As Graphics = e.Graphics
Dim gradientBrush As New LinearGradientBrush(New Point(0, 0), New Point(0, sender.Height), My.Settings.GradientColor_
g.FillRectangle(gradientBr
End Sub
This does work, but at times, the form flickers for a few seconds before the painting is done. In trying to figure out what is happening, I found that the Paint event for the tab above fired about 80 times when that tab was selected! I assume that is the cause of the flickering, because other tabs on the same Tab Control have their Paint event fired fewer times, and they flicker less. But why would a tab page have to fire so many times? And, more importantly, is there a better way for me to implement gradient shading onto my program screens?
Thank you in advance.
Vijay
Asked:
1 Solution
First of all, take x77 advice about Option Strict. This is the best thing you can offer yourself in this Visual Basic world. The little pain of having to cast more often is nothing to the hours of debugging it can save you.
Second, since you are handling the background, I would put the code in OnPaintBackground instead of OnPaint.
But, this would not solve your problem. The problem comes from the fact that OnPaint and Paint are called for every control that gets drawn on the container. The more controls you have on the container, the more flickering you get. You need to have something that draws very fast, otherwise you get the flickering.
DoubleBuffering helps a little, but not much.
I have tried dozens of ways to prevent that, but since its controlled at the framework level, there is nothing to do. No matter what method you use to delay the call to the painting events, as soon as you enable them, its as if a Refresh is sent to all the controls on the TabControl, and this falls through the TabControl that repaints itself for each of its child.
I am not even sure that there is a solution. The TabControl is one of the few controls that cannot have transparency, so I think that even the guys at Microsoft were not able to solve it.
This one is the worst problem I had in 40 years of programming. In my case, the background is a textured bitmap, so it is even slower than with a gradient. If somebody could come up with a solution, I would give him all the points I have accumulated in the last month (symbollically only, since this is not possible :-)).
Second, since you are handling the background, I would put the code in OnPaintBackground instead of OnPaint.
But, this would not solve your problem. The problem comes from the fact that OnPaint and Paint are called for every control that gets drawn on the container. The more controls you have on the container, the more flickering you get. You need to have something that draws very fast, otherwise you get the flickering.
DoubleBuffering helps a little, but not much.
I have tried dozens of ways to prevent that, but since its controlled at the framework level, there is nothing to do. No matter what method you use to delay the call to the painting events, as soon as you enable them, its as if a Refresh is sent to all the controls on the TabControl, and this falls through the TabControl that repaints itself for each of its child.
I am not even sure that there is a solution. The TabControl is one of the few controls that cannot have transparency, so I think that even the guys at Microsoft were not able to solve it.
This one is the worst problem I had in 40 years of programming. In my case, the background is a textured bitmap, so it is even slower than with a gradient. If somebody could come up with a solution, I would give him all the points I have accumulated in the last month (symbollically only, since this is not possible :-)).
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I suggest a :
Debug.Print "Paint " & Sender.ToString
at end of syour tbpOptimizer_Paint method.
I think you are painting twice.
By sample on Form.OnPaint and event suscription for Paint event.
Note. You wrote "sender.Width". You do´nt use "Option Strict". It saves a lot of code errors.
Take it at Project Properties on compiler Tab.
For new Project you can change Tools - Options - Project and Solutions - Default values for Vb (option Strict= ON).
I know that Option Strict demands more code (Ctype, Directcast ...), but it is the best option.