Xcode view transparent background without influencing subviews

Question

I want to program a custom keyboard for a textfield. The background of the keyboard should be transparent, but when I try to set the alpha of the keyboardView, the alpha of its subviews changes too. How can I change the keyboard's alpha only? I don't want to set it to [UIColor clearColor].

keyboardView.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:0 green:0 blue:0 alpha:0.5];
keyboardView.alpha = 0.2;
keyboardView.backgroundColor = [[UIColor clearColor] colorWithAlphaComponent];

Answer 1

Changing a view's alpha alters the view and all it's subviews.

If you want the non-drawn parts of your view to show what's underneath, set the view's opaque flag to NO and then set the background color to clearColor.