Don't inherit parent frame alpha

[Freebaser]

With SetAlpha, all child objects inherit the parent frame alpha. Is there a way around that? I want a specific frame to always have 100% alpha, and still Show/Hide with the parent frame.

[Haleth]

I don't believe that there is; however, you could choose an other parent for your child frame hook the OnShow/OnHide of your original parent frame so that it hides the child frame.

[SDPhantom]

The only way is to not have the child frame parented to the main frame. You'll need to adjust the frame level to what it would be if it were parented to make sure it draws on top. To make it show/hide with the main frame, you'll need to hook the OnShow and OnHide scripts on the main frame to call frame:Show() and frame:Hide() on the "child".

For frames "MainFrame" and "ChildFrame" do:

ChildFrame:SetFrameLevel(MainFrame:GetFrameLevel()+1);
MainFrame:HookScript("OnShow",function() ChildFrame:Show(); end);
MainFrame:HookScript("OnHide",function() ChildFrame:Hide(); end);

This should mimic the Show/Hide behavior while isolating the alpha. Note, ChildFrame cannot be parented to MainFrame, otherwise the alpha of MainFrame will be applied.

[Freebaser]

Alright, thanks.

[Phanx]

Another option would be to call :SetAlpha on a texture attached to the main frame instead of calling :SetAlpha on the main frame itself.

If you have multiple elements you want to fade, you could also create an invisible "super parent" and parent both the main frame and the "child" frame to it, and then just call :Hide and :Show on that.