Question

Is it possible to animate ListView items in C# ? The purpose is that I have a ListView that is asynchronously modified, and I’d like to animate smoothly the items that have been modified, until the user clicks them. This way items blinking, or whatever would do the trick, are the items that changed which haven’t been reviewed yet.

Thank you guys !

UPDATE : sorry, i forgot. Never used WPF before, and I think it’s too late to switch to it now. I’m using winforms.

Answer 1

I had to do something similar to what you are trying to do but instead of animating the ListView, I used custom checkbox layout in the list view to look different. The designer code for the ListView looks like:

        this.listView1.HeaderStyle = System.Windows.Forms.ColumnHeaderStyle.None;
        this.listView1.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(104, 90);
        this.listView1.MultiSelect = false;
        this.listView1.Name = "listView1";
        this.listView1.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(264, 105);
        this.listView1.Sorting = System.Windows.Forms.SortOrder.Ascending;
        this.listView1.TabIndex = 7;
        this.listView1.UseCompatibleStateImageBehavior = false;
        this.listView1.View = System.Windows.Forms.View.Details;
        this.listView1.MouseClick += new System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventHandler(this.listView1_MouseClick);

Then I declared a list that will hold the selection of the user.

    private IList<ListViewItem> m_CheckedItems = new List<ListViewItem>();

Here is the initialise method for the ListView. You need to manipulate here for the initial look of your listview.

    private void InitialiseListView(IList<string> data)
    {
        listView1.Items.Clear();
        m_CheckedItems.Clear();
        listView1.Columns.Clear();
        listView1.Columns.Add("Col1");
        listView1.Columns[0].Width = listView1.Width;
        ListView.ListViewItemCollection collection = new ListView.ListViewItemCollection(listView1);
        ImageList images = new ImageList();
        images.Images.Add(global::MyApplication.Properties.Resources.Checkbox_Unchecked);
        images.Images.Add(global::MyApplication.Properties.Resources.Checkbox_Checked);
        listView1.SmallImageList = images;
        foreach (string str in data)
        {
            ListViewItem item = new ListViewItem();
            item.ImageIndex = 0;
            item.Text = str;
            collection.Add(item);
        }
    }

This event triggers when the user selects an option in the list view. The selection is recorded in the list I created above and the checked image is displayed so that it looks like the user has selected the item.

    private void listView1_MouseClick(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.Button == MouseButtons.Left && listView1.FocusedItem != null)
        {
            if (listView1.FocusedItem.ImageIndex == 1)
            {
                listView1.FocusedItem.ImageIndex = 0;
                m_CheckedItems.Remove(listView1.FocusedItem);
            }
            else
            {
                listView1.FocusedItem.ImageIndex = 1;
                m_CheckedItems.Add(listView1.FocusedItem);
            }
        }
    }

You can probably fiddle with fonts and forecolor of these items … Each item within a List View is of type ListViewItem so you can individually manipulate it.

Hope this gives you some direction 🙂