Fade all other windows of an application when a dialog is shown?

Question

How to dim / fade all other windows of an application in Delphi 2009.

Form has an AlphaBlend property, but it controls only transparency level. But it would be nice if

Answer 1

One way to do this is to place another form behind your dialog, this form would have no borders, and would contain a single image. This image would be a capture of the entire desktop from just before the dialog popped up, then run through a transform to lower the luminosity of each pixel by 50%. One trick that works quite well here is to use a black form, and to only include ever other pixel. If you know for certain that you will have theme support, you can optionally use a completely black form and use the alphablend and alphablendvalue properties..this will allow the OS to perform the luminosity transformation for you. An alphablendvalue of 128 is = 50%.

EDIT

As mghie pointed out, there is the possibility of a user pressing alt-tab to switch to another application. One way to handle this scenario would be to hide the "overlay" window in the application.OnDeactivate event, and to show it on the application.OnActivate event. Just remember to set the zorder of the overlay window lower than your modal dialog.