How to Create a Splash Screen in a Windows Forms Application?

Building a Splash Screen for Your Windows Forms App

This guide outlines the steps to create a splash screen that appears while your Windows Forms application loads.

1. Designing the Splash Screen Form:

Begin by creating a new form in your project. Make it borderless and prevent resizing. Add your desired image, center it on the form, and set the background color.

2. Configuring Splash Screen Properties:

Adjust the following properties of your splash screen form:

• ControlBox, MaximizeBox, MinimizeBox, ShowIcon: Set these to False to remove standard window controls.
• StartPosition: Set to CenterScreen to center the splash screen on the user's monitor.
• FormBorderStyle: Set to None to eliminate the window border.
• MinimumSize and MaximumSize: Set these to match the form's Size to prevent resizing.

3. Displaying and Hiding the Splash Screen:

In your application's Main method or the main form's Load event handler:

• Create an instance of your splash screen form and call its Show() method.
• Maintain a reference to this form instance.
• After your application's startup tasks are complete, close the splash screen using Close().

4. Advanced Techniques:

• Animated Splash Screens: Enable double buffering to improve the smoothness of animations.
• Background Tasks: Use a BackgroundWorker to handle lengthy startup initialization tasks off the main UI thread. This prevents the splash screen from freezing.
• Designer Initialization: Set all form properties in the designer to avoid potential runtime issues. This ensures a consistent and reliable splash screen experience.

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