WPF - Animated User Control

Question

Greetings

I'm currently making an application in WPF as I'm fairly new to WPF I'm running into some difficulties. I have Googled my question but with no great success. This is the current situation, XAML of main window below:

<Grid Height="279" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="166,0,0,0" Name="gridScoreboard" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="808">
    <!--Scoreboard Image-->
    <Image Source="pack://application:,,,/Images/Style/Scoreboard.png" Width="517" Height="91" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="138,1,0,0" Name="image1" Stretch="Fill" VerticalAlignment="Top" />

    <Canvas Name="canvasRacePlayer1" Width="14" Height="14" Canvas.Left="33" Canvas.Top="66" Background="Transparent" MouseLeftButtonDown="canvasRacePlayer1_MouseLeftButtonDown" Margin="171,70,623,195" />
    <local:ucRaces HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="93,62,632,187" Width="78" Visibility="Hidden" x:Name="ucRacesP1" Height="33" />
</Grid>

The user control is hidden from the start (ucRaces), once the little canvas (canvasRacePLayer1) is clicked the user control will be shown. However I would like this user control to 'slide' from right to left from a certain point. As if it would become visible in small steps. I have found information for animations for rectangles and buttons but no success really for User Controls.

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

If you are going to create animations for your WPF project, I suggest that you use Expression Blend. You can design your program using EB and implement the functionality of it using Visual Studio. It will be hard to make animations, writing XAML syntax or C# code.

How would you be able to animate your user controls using EB? Well, it is actually very simple. You need to open your existing WPF project first. Then, go to File -> New Item -> User Control, and create the user control. Then, if you want to add it to your project, switch back to the WPF project currently open in EB and click the right arrows (>>) on the toolbar placed on the left-hand side of the screen and go to Project -> [Your User Control Here]. Now you have added it to your project.

If you want to animate the user control, you have to add a StoryBoard to your timeline. When you are on your WPF project in EB, under Objects and Timeline, click the plus (+) sign and add a new StoryBoard. Now, you have a timeline that you need to use to animate your user control. You can place KeyTime attributes on the timeline and define the path the user control is supposed to follow from location A to location B and also the level of opacity if you want the user control to gradually become visible.

You can add one more user control and implement its logic for the second user. Expression Blend will make your life easier.

Answer 2

Animating your UserControl shouldn't be much different from animating any other WPF object: You can either animate the margin (using a ThicknessAnimation), or drop your user control into a canvas of its own, then animate the Canvas.Left property of your user control. In the latter case, take care to put the property name in parenthesis: Storyboard.TargetProperty="(Canvas.Left)".