@pcurtis
On my Ubuntu Mate, my demo shows soft shadow. I believe that is handled by window decorator, which can be changed on the appearance/theme settings. Does my Captionless Dragable Form not show the shadow on Windows?
If you want it on normal forms, I have no idea how to do it. But if you want captionless
splash form with soft or drop shadow, I think I know how to do it. I observed Corel Graphics Suite splash screens, I believe this is how they do it:
1. On starting the program do a screen capture
2. Paint a drop or soft shadow on the captured image
3. Crop the image and put it on the Form.OnPaint
4. Draw the logo, name and copyright information
5. Now the form can have semi-transparent shadow on the desktop background
6. User should not be allowed to move the splash screen
This is the examples of splash form I meant:
https://community.coreldraw.com/talk/coreldraw_graphics_suite_x7/f/coreldraw-graphics-suite-feature-requests/17401/my-welcome-screen-for-x5The drop/soft shadow should be able done using BGRABitmap. For screen capturing, it has been discussed on the forum you can search for it.
Below is the previous demo showing the shadow, which is provided automatically by the window decorator on Ubuntu Mate: