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. 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.