TabControl transparent background

Question

I'd like to know if there's some way to render the background of a TabControl transparent (the TabControl, not the TabPages), instead of taking the parent form background color. I've some forms with custom painting where I draw a gradient as the background but this gradient doesn't paint behind the tabcontrols. I tried setting TabControl.Backcolor = Color.Transparent but it tells me it's not supported. I'm using VS2005 and framework 2.0. (set style does not help) Does anyone have good workaround to this issue?

Answer 1

According to this thread on msdn, the tabcontrol does not support changing the backcolor to transparent, however you can supposedly override the drawitem method.

Answer 2

custom tab conrol:

[DllImport("uxtheme", ExactSpelling = true)] public extern static Int32 DrawThemeParentBackground(IntPtr hWnd, IntPtr hdc, ref Rectangle pRect);

    protected override void OnPaintBackground(PaintEventArgs e)
    {
        if (this.BackColor == Color.Transparent)
        {
            IntPtr hdc = e.Graphics.GetHdc();
            Rectangle rec = new Rectangle(e.ClipRectangle.Left,
                e.ClipRectangle.Top, e.ClipRectangle.Width, e.ClipRectangle.Height);
            DrawThemeParentBackground(this.Handle, hdc, ref rec);
            e.Graphics.ReleaseHdc(hdc);
        }
        else
        {
            base.OnPaintBackground(e);
        }
    }