stack blendlevel with opaque controls?

[Scott Rossi]

Recently, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> I think I know the answer to this (no), but has anyone unlocked a secret
> way to make good-looking transparent palettes in which the palette is
> black with a blendlevel of about 30 but the controls within it are fully
> opaque?
> 
> I know I could use a window shape with an alpha channel for this, but
> that's more work than I'd prefer to do for multiple platforms, and seems
> error-prone (not to mention losing the smooth built-in resizability).

Unfortunately, the only way to do this currently is using a windowshape.

Do your palettes really need to be resizable by the user?  What I've done in
some of my projects is to make predefined expanded and collapsed sizes of a
palette, that "flip" between states.  The change is fast even when using
custom windoshapes.  Maybe this could be an option for you.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, UX Design