AmbientAttributes.alphaBlend

[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Player SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer. MediaPlayer has been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer instead of Windows Media Player SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

The alphaBlend attribute specifies or retrieves a value for alpha blending any VIEW, SUBVIEW, or UI widget.

        elementID.alphaBlend

Possible Values

This attribute is a read/write Number (long) with a value ranging from 0 (no opacity) to 255 (full opacity) and a default value of 255.

Remarks

This attribute allows an element to appear semitransparent, depending on the amount of opacity set. The less opacity, the more transparent the element will appear. Each element in the skin can have a separate opacity value except for button elements in a BUTTONGROUP control. When alphaBlend is set in VIEW, the opacity of the entire skin will be set. Alpha blend will not work for windowed controls, including PLAYLIST, EFFECTS, LISTBOX, POPUP, EDITBOX, and VIDEO (if windowless is set to false). When alphaBlend is set on VIEW, the whole skin becomes transparent. The transparencyColor attributes used by several elements are not supported with alphaBlend.

When you use alphaBlend with a TEXT element that does not have the backgroundColor specified, a background color of black will be used. If the foreground color is also black (which is the default value for TEXT.foregroundColor), your text may become unreadable. To prevent this, always specify the backgroundColor attribute, or set foregroundColor to a color other than black.

Requirements

See also

Ambient Attributes

AmbientAttributes.alphaBlendTo

TEXT Element

TEXT.backgroundColor

TEXT.foregroundColor