WPF Title Animator

Let me just say, for the record, that WPF is awesome.  It manages to blend the best web design strategies with the power and flexibility of desktop (so-called "smart client") applications, and then go above and beyond to provide a visual framework that can visually stunning, yet flexible enough to meet the demands of data-driven applications.  The only problem is that… well, it’s pretty easy to get carried away.  I could spend days getting every little detail perfect, from kerning the fonts and setting a baseline to control templating every control with a non-standard look and animation. 

Over the course of my last work term with Systemgroup, we built a wealth management application using WPF to see what it was all about (pictures and a longer description are in my career portfolio).  And while I had an absolutely amazing time creating the patterns and practices for such an application in WPF, there wasn’t much time (nor budget) to get carried away, so one weekend I decided to check out WPF animation on my own.  This is the result of that experimentation.

Title Animator Details

The title animator is a simple WPF application, and can be run standalone on any computer with .NET 3.0 installed (the executable is in the /bin/debug/ folder of the zip file below).  For the developers out there, the full source code (a Visual Studio 2005 project) is available for you to modify to your heart’s content — the text displayed is generated from an array of strings established in the window’s constructor.  Systemgroup and I ended up using the code to build a neat about screen into our application; simply compile the project as a class library and include in your project, launching the window to display the full animation.  The application can be closed by pressing a key on the keyboard or clicking the mouse.

WPF Title Animator source code [zip, 600K]