Tip of the Month (November 2008)

Background Image for a Form

Visual CE allows you to specify the background color of the form (using the FORM | COLOR command in the development environment), but you might want to use an image (such as a company logo) as your background instead. Starting with release 11 of Visual CE, you can do this with an Image Control.

On your form, create an image control (CONTROL | IMAGE). When asked "Does the image depend on a value in a column of the table or a variable?", answer NO. Click the button with the three dots, navigate to the image you want ot use as the background, and click OK. Click OK the properties dialog. Resize the image control appropriately.

After you do this, you may find that the new image control obscures other controls in the development environment. To "push" it into the background, do a FILE | SAVE immediately followed by a FILE | OPEN (and reopen the same form). The image will be pushed into the background. It will remainin the background until you click on the control again (in which case you can push it back into the background again by re-opening the form).

When the form runs, the image will always remain in the background, even if someone clicks on it.