Transparency for windows forms textbox

I never liked having to make my own inherited controls for this. So I made a wrapper function to the private SetStyle function.

Try using it instead of creating your own class?

public static bool SetStyle(Control c, ControlStyles Style, bool value)
{
    bool retval = false;
    Type typeTB = typeof(Control);
    System.Reflection.MethodInfo misSetStyle = typeTB.GetMethod("SetStyle", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance);
    if (misSetStyle != null && c != null) { misSetStyle.Invoke(c, new object[] { Style, value }); retval = true; }
    return retval;
}

bool itWorked = SetStyle(myControl, ControlStyles.SupportsTransparentBackColor, true);

Create a new control which inherits from TextBox, set the style to allow tranparency in the constructor. Then use your new control instead of TextBox

Do this in your constructor:

this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.SupportsTransparentBackColor, true);

This will allow your new control to have a transparent background color.

You can read more about control styles here; MSDN: Control Styles, this may help as well; Inheriting from a Windows Forms Control with Visual C#

You need to try out something like this.

Add a new user control , say CustomTextBox and change

public partial class CustomTextBox : UserControl

to

public partial class CustomTextBox : TextBox

You will then get the following error saying that the 'AutoScaleMode' is not defined. Delete the following line in the Designer.cs class.

this.AutoScaleMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoScaleMode.Font;

Make changes to the constructor of your newly added control as follows.

public partial class CustomTextBox : TextBox
{
    public CustomTextBox()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        SetStyle(ControlStyles.SupportsTransparentBackColor |
                 ControlStyles.OptimizedDoubleBuffer |
                 ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint |
                 ControlStyles.ResizeRedraw |
                 ControlStyles.UserPaint, true);
        BackColor = Color.Transparent;
    }
}

Build, close the custom control designer if open and you will be able to use this control on any other control or form.

Drop it from the toolbox as shown below