How to build splash screen in windows forms application?

by

First, create your splash screen as a borderless, immovable form with your image on it, set to initially display at the center of the screen, colored the way you want. All of this can be set from within the designer; specifically, you want to:

  • Set the form’s ControlBox, MaximizeBox, MinimizeBox and ShowIcon properties to “False”
  • Set the StartPosition property to “CenterScreen”
  • Set the FormBorderStyle property to “None”
  • Set the form’s MinimumSize and MaximumSize to be the same as its initial Size.

Then, you need to decide where to show it and where to dismiss it. These two tasks need to occur on opposite sides of the main startup logic of your program. This could be in your application’s main() routine, or possibly in your main application form’s Load handler; wherever you’re creating large expensive objects, reading settings from the hard drive, and generally taking a long time to do stuff behind the scenes before the main application screen displays.

Then, all you have to do is create an instance of your form, Show() it, and keep a reference to it while you do your startup initialization. Once your main form has loaded, Close() it.

If your splash screen will have an animated image on it, the window will need to be “double-buffered” as well, and you will need to be absolutely sure that all initialization logic happens outside the GUI thread (meaning you cannot have your main loading logic in the mainform’s Load handler; you’ll have to create a BackgroundWorker or some other threaded routine.

More Related Contents:

  1. Splash Screen waiting until thread finishes
  2. Multi-threaded splash screen in C#?
  3. Windows Forms Splash Screen – Show a form while loading main form
  4. How do you simulate Mouse Click in C#?
  5. Show Console in Windows Application?
  6. Passing data between forms
  7. Fake-scrolling containers with very many controls
  8. How do I programmatically change printer settings with the WebBrowser control?
  9. Add timer to a Windows Forms application
  10. Show Transparent Loading Spinner above other Controls
  11. Flip the GraphicsPath that draws the text/string
  12. How to get selected text of any application into a windows form application
  13. Accuracy of TextRenderer.MeasureText results
  14. Show row number in row header of a DataGridView
  15. Custom Caret for WinForms TextBox
  16. Merge cells in datagridview
  17. Event when a window gets maximized/un-maximized
  18. How do I add a ToolTip to a control?
  19. Elegant Log Window in WinForms C#
  20. How to capture mouse wheel on panel?
  21. Only allow specific characters in textbox
  22. Forcing a checkbox bound to a DataSource to update when it has not been viewed yet
  23. Create custom shape for button
  24. Auto-width of ComboBox’s content
  25. Get cursor position with respect to the control – C#
  26. How to get the screenshot of the form
  27. DataGridView bound to BindingList does not refresh when value changed
  28. How to move focus on next cell in a datagridview on Enter key press event
  29. How to get DPI in C# .NET?
  30. Open Form2 from Form1, close Form1 from Form2

Leave a Comment