I need a bunch of controls that have fixed signal/slot bindings but can be placed into various dialogs depending on app modes. My solution is a widget that creates the control widgets as children of itself, but does not show them; it then connects to their signals using QMetaObject::connectSlotsByName(). Later I insert the controls into layouts in the variable dialogs.

This works nicely except for one glitch: the control widgets "flash" briefly on screen as they are being created (on WinVista32, haven't tried others). The "flash" is not the whole widget, just a small window frame, -- whose style changes according to window flags passed to the widget c'tor. It happens whether the generating widget has a parent or not ( I create it parentless, otherwise a permanent small black rectangle shows in the parent's client area).

Can anyone suggest a solution?

Thanks, Tom