Add a child window to a Layered window

Question

Here is the problem. I have a layered window which represents the main GUI of my application. I created another window that hosts an IWebBrowser2 ActiveX control to show a part of a website. I am trying to add the hwnd of the browser window to the main window. If the parent window is a normal window everything is fine but when i try to create it as a WS_EX_LAYERED window, the added browser window does not appear anymore. How can i signal the main window to draw the other window too?

Answer 1

Children windows inherit the transparency settings from parent window. You could not have transparent parent with opaque children. The possible workaround is to create non-rectangular window region for parent window - with hole for opaque window (But it will be not child window in this case).