Delphi – TButton with transparent PNG image and glowing hover effect

What you want is a transparent control that inherits from TWinControl since you want it to be able to retrieve focus, this has never been an easy task. However since recent versions Embarcadero has provided a control that provides this. The TCustomTransparentControl is a TWinControl descendent that makes the task a bit easier for you.

So, what I would do is to create a new component, and inherit it from TCustomTransparentControl, then what I would do is to overwrite the Paint method like this:

procedure TMyTransparentButton.Paint;
var
  rc: TRect;
begin
  if not (csDestroying in ComponentState) then
  begin
    // Specify size and location of the image.
    rc := Rect(0, 0, pngImage.Width, pngImage.Height);

    // Draw the image on the canvas.
    pngImage.Draw(Canvas, rc);
  end;
end;

By this approach you should be able to get the transparency and translucency you are looking for. However you still need to handle the situation where the button is disabled, pressed, etc.

There's no reason to backup whole DFM file.

Before doing something to your ImageList you should export your images: click the "Export" button in the image list editor and it will save all images to a single .BMP file.

After changing properties: ColorDepth = cd32Bit, DrawingStyle = dsTransparent

You should click "Add" button and select the file you previously exported. Then, images will be drawn with transparency in the menu and toolbars (on D2010 at least)... No need to use 3rd party components.