How to render buttons over a picture
(Not available with Light edition)
By default, 3D Active Button Magic controls will be drawn on the solid background of the container form so they will anti-alias their borders using the background color of the container form itself: this can be an issue if the container form has a background picture instead of a solid background; you can manage this situation in two ways depending upon the need of your application:
If rendering speed is an important issue
When
3D Active Button Magic controls are rendered over a picture, anti-aliasing can significantly degrade performance. In this case, it is best to disable anti-aliasing at design-time. (See the
Others tab for more details)
You can also disable the use of anti-aliasing at Runtime, setting to FALSE the
UseAntialiasing property.
If graphic quality is more important than rendering speed
In this case we can use anti-aliasing (set by default) and, more important, we can tell the control to anti-alias with the underlying picture through the
Transparent factor setting available inside the
Surfaces tab of 3D Button Visual Editor; setting this value to 1, will cause the control to grab the underlying picture for an optimal anti-aliasing of its borders. Note that setting this value to higher values will raise the control transparency factor.
On the picture below you can see a summary of the available options:
worst solution, no action taken: button 1 have its borders anti-aliased with the container form background color and displays an unwanted white line around its borders
best solution for speed: button 2 doesn't use anti-aliasing but you can see the jagged borders around the control.
best solution for graphic quality: button 3 use anti-aliasing (set by default) and has the Transparent factor set to 1: no jagged border is visible.
best solution for graphic quality and use of transparency: button 4 use anti-aliasing (set by default) and has the Transparent factor set to 128: no jagged border is visible and the underlying picture appears through the button.
