Thanks for the detailed explanation. After a more extensive searching I found out how to use xml_parser for blogspot feed. It certainly seems easier than regex.

I had an issue recently in 2.0 that was fixed in service pack 1. I then found that 2.0 SP1 is bundled as part of 3.5 SP1 so if I was starting a new project I would not bother with anything lower than 3.5 SP1 If you want a widest potential audience for your application, it is probably best to stick to 2.0 however, as it is part of 3.0 and 3.5, and therefore will be on more machines than any other version. The only versions worth upgrading from, and it is an upgrade not just recompile, is from 1.0 and 1.1. Even Microsoft are not supporting them much these days. If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it. Margaret Fuller (1810 - 1850) [My Articles]  [My Website]

1. make sure the background control (ListBox, whatever) and the foreground control (Panel) both have the Form as their parent. (If you were to use Visual Dersigner, and simply add the background control first, then a smaller foreground Control on top of it, it would be a child of the background, not of the form). One way of doing that is: position it outside the background color, select it, goto properties, and type a new location value. 2. at run-time, never move the controls, never change their Z-order. Let them as they are. 3. in as much as the foreground control must be transparent (visually) and must ignore the mouse (click-through), do whatever that takes (Enabled=false; for starters). :) Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, and improve readability.

That is too bad. I'm afraid I can't help you any further. You'll need more Googling and some luck. FWIW: the way I understand it, transparency is handled entirely different in WPF; I haven't tested it, and I was told the learning curve is rather steep... :) Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, and improve readability.

You probably found answer by now, but: 1. Threads are automatically recycled when they finish performing work assigned to them (exit outside method) 2. Not as far as I know - you can't say from outside: "Hey, turn off Thread #23". But inside method you can look for certain switches/flags (class bool parameter for example) and have some condition like: if (flag) return; // exiting out of method