A few days ago I wanted to create a fresher UI then what .NET Compact Framework offers out of the box. I wanted to create a gradient background for the screen and I wanted to have transparent labels on top of the background. In my opinion this is not much to ask for and I was a bit surprised that I actually had to do this myself.

Well after a few hours I made a gradient background and a transparent label. I will now step by step go through my solution.

The first thing I started with was to create a gradient background. I found that the best way achieving this would be to override OnPaintBackground in the Screen class. I found a very good article on how to do this on MSDN: How to display a gradient fill. I copied the GradientFill class and the Win32Helper class into my project, I didn’t bother using the GradientFilledButton class since I only needed gradient for my background.

Then I override the OnPaintBackground in my Screen, giving me this Form:

using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;

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