Making a splash screen

Question

The concept of a splash screen doesn\'t strike me as something that should be so complicated, but I\'m having trouble getting the whole splash screen painted.

Let\'s

Answer 1

Like me you probably created this as an afterthought and do not want to go through all the heck of redesigning your code to fit multi-threaded architecture...

First create a new Form called SpashScreen, in the properties click on BackgroundImage and import whatever image you want. Also set FormBorderStyle to None so that you can't click on the x to close the screen.

    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        BackgroundWorker bw = new BackgroundWorker();
        bw.WorkerSupportsCancellation = true;
        bw.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(bw_DoWork);
        bw.RunWorkerAsync();  // start up your spashscreen thread
        startMainForm();      // do all your time consuming stuff here  
        bw.CancelAsync();     // close your splashscreen thread  
    }


    private void bw_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
    {
        BackgroundWorker worker = sender as BackgroundWorker;

        SplashScreen ss = new SplashScreen();
        ss.Show();

        while (!worker.CancellationPending) //just hangout and wait
        {
            Thread.Sleep(1000);
        }

        if (worker.CancellationPending)
        {
            ss.Close();
            e.Cancel = true;
        }

    }

This does not support progress bar or any fancy stuff but I am sure it can be tweaked.