Question

I’m trying to implement a way to animate (translate, fade) controls around (more than one at the same time possibly) elegantly. For example, lets say I had a picture in the top left corner, and a textbox in the bottom right corner, I’d like to be able to have them smoothly slide across the window and switch places. I’ve been working for awhile but have not come up with anything that achieves this smoothly or easily.

Answer 1

Check out the dot-net-transitions project on Google Code. There’s now a clone on Github here. It’s also available on nuget as dot-net-transitions. It supports a variety of linear/non-linear transitions including composite transitions that can be used for more complex effects such as ripple.

Here is a working sample that demonstrates your desired behavior:

var pictureBox = new PictureBox
    {
        ImageLocation = "http://icons2.iconarchive.com/icons/klukeart/summer/128/hamburger-icon.png",
        SizeMode = PictureBoxSizeMode.AutoSize
    };
var textBox = new TextBox
    {
        Text = "Hello World",
        Location = new Point(140, 140)
    };
var form = new Form
    {
        Controls =
        {
            textBox,
            pictureBox
        }
    };
form.Click += (sender, e) =>
    {
        // swap the Left and Top properties using a transition
        var t = new Transition(new TransitionType_EaseInEaseOut(1000));
        t.add(pictureBox, "Left", textBox.Left);
        t.add(pictureBox, "Top", textBox.Top);
        t.add(textBox, "Left", pictureBox.Left);
        t.add(textBox, "Top", pictureBox.Top);
        t.run();
    };
form.ShowDialog();