Web pages do this by displaying a partially transparent control over the page before opening the popup. You should be able to do the same in PowerBuilder.

Hi Jorge;

  I have no issues doing this in my STD framework. For example ...

  In the above example, the Zoom window just uses a function that sets the Window's transparency property as follows:

THIS.transparency  =  ai_transparency           // Save setting

No special MS-Windows API's are required. The transparency in the above example is 40% and a solid window is 0%

Tip: Have a look at the "wn_zoom_master" object class in the framework.  HTH

Regards ... Chris

This evening I was able to throw together a little sample app that makes the window partially transparent and then opaque again (thanks for the URL's you provided, Miguel!) using the GetWindowLongW, SetWindowLongW and SetLayeredWindowAttributes API functions. No manifest is needed, at least on a system running Windows 10.

To perform the bitwise Or and bitwise Not operations, I borrowed the Numerical Service object from the PowerBuilder Foundation Class (PFC) libraries.

Have fun!

John is right,

Do a search https://duckduckgo.com/?q=powerbuilder+transparent+window&atb=v354-1&ia=web and you should find what you need.

Don't forget to change al Hwnd variables in API functions need to be changed to LongPtr data type.

https://www.programmersought.com/article/47565355406/ 

https://github.com/thansuoi113/PowerBuilder-Make-The-Window-Transparent/tree/main/PB105/src 

https://www.rgagnon.com/pbdetails/pb-0210.html 

Instead of using windows APIs, you can also use the transparency attributes of Powerbuilder itself, but I think that in that case you will also have to set the transparency of any objects on top of your window:

https://community.appeon.com/index.php/qna/q-a/transparent-windows-in-windows-10 

https://docs.appeon.com/pb2017r3/migrating_pb_apps/ch07s03.html 

regards,

Hi, Jorge - 

I've not done this, but a search of the Windows API indicates this can be accomplished by setting/changing the window style via the SetWindowLong API function and then using the SetWindowLayeredAttributes API function. Here is a link you should examine that includes some C/C++ code snippets:

   https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winmsg/using-windows#using-layered-windows

Note the last sentence in this section: "In order to use layered child windows, the application has to declare itself Windows 8-aware in the manifest." I'm not familiar with the use of manifests, so I don't know what OS-awareness level(s) applications created in the latest versions of PB are. All I'm saying that utilizing the API functions listed above may not produce the desired behavior unless a custom manifest accompanies the app.

Best regards, John