32-bit Bitmap

Chris Eargle — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:46:38 GMT

If you're creating toolbars and menus for Visual Studio, the only way to get a crisp icon for the item is to use a 32-bit bitmap, which is a 24-bit bitmap plus an 8-bit alpha channel. Unlike lower bit levels, 32-bit bitmaps support transparency which prevent your icons from looking like a box. Worse still, I discovered that using 24-bit bitmaps creates artifacts in the form of little black dots when rendered.

Unfortunately, unless you have a license to Photoshop, you may discover that none of your tools create 32-bit bitmaps. I don't have a Photoshop license at work so I use Paint.NET to do my graphical work (which is great in most of my scenarios). Here's what the Paint.NET author had to say about why 32-bit bitmaps aren't supported: "GDI+ just refuses to cooperate in allowing me to do that."

Luckily, I found a free tool, AlphaConv, that will convert png files to 32-bit bmp files. My process is as follows.

1) Create a png in Paint.NET with 32-bit Bit Depth.

2) Drag and drop the png into AlphaConv with Target format set to .bmp.

3) Copy the resulting bmp file to my project directory, compile my application.

String to Stream

Chris Eargle — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:37:35 GMT

Sometimes a string isn't enough, you need a stream. Unfortunately, there isn't a direct method to stick a string into a stream. But we are saved! MemoryStream will take bytes... here's how to convert your string into a series of bytes so you can get that all important StringStream. No, I'm not going to make a StringStream class though you certainly can fulfill your masochistic class explosion desires.

String request = "I can has cheezburger?";

MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(request));

Techniques

32-bit Bitmap

String to Stream