Need sample code: small little animation

A very simple solution: put a picture box on your form. Create a number of files called pic01.bmp, pic02.bmp, etc. or any other sequence you can follow. You can also use other format supported by .Net picture box. Then implement a change of the picture (in a separate thread) and sleep this thread for a while until you operation finishes.

The following example shows this in case you have a loop from 0 to 19 and you have 4 pictures: pic01.bmp, pic02.bmp, pic03.bmp and pic04.bmp in the current folder. You need to change the name and number of pictures and the loop stopping to be when your process stops. Some thread synchronization needed there....

private void button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
      new System.Threading.Thread (new System.Threading.ThreadStart (ThreadBody)).Start();
}

private void ThreadBody()
{
      for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
      {
            this.pictureBox1.Image = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile ("pic" + ((i % 4).ToString().PadLeft (2, '0')) + ".bmp");
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep (100);
      }
}

Of course you will set the GIF image at the operation start and remove it on operation end.

Well, since no one else has commented, I'll make a suggestion (BTW: I'm *way* out of my topic area here ;-))

Can you create an animated .GIF and put that on a dialog?

All you'll need to do to create it is to take your existing logo and use a graphics package that can save animated gif's, then create each frame by resizing the image horizontally by a couple of pixels at a time.

I suspect purpleblob might have some ideas, but he could be waiting for you to accept or comment on previous questions.

Hi TheAvenger,

  You couldn't have timed that any better ;-)

:-))

jimmack thanks for the thoughts - but I haven't said anything on this as I think TheAvenger has pretty much covered the two best routes to implementing this - one of which you have covered also.

The animated GIF will probably give you the best control for creating your animation - ofcourse you could always look at embedding the Flash OCX and run a Flash animation - just to really "flash" ;-)

Ok,

We already have the rotating graphic in flash, how would i embed it?  

Well there's a Flash ActiveX control (which is what you see in IE when embedding Flash in web pages).

It's the Shockwave Flash Object in the COM objects. Add this to your toolbox by selecting a toolbox tab then right mouse clicking and selecting Add/Remove Items... select the COM Components find Shockwave Flash Object and then press OK adding it to your toolbox.

Now you've got it you can place it on a Form and set the Movie property the the path/filename of your .swf file and your on your way, you might need the stop and playing properties to interact with your animation

Is binding your application with Flash really a good solution for such a simple task? Isn't it better to use the processor power for the real thing you are doing behind, not for loading Flash and the movie? Also remember that this way you will bind to Flash, everyone who uses your app will need it installed, and some customers may be somewhat unhappy about that...

I'm not going to use flash, I was just wondering for future reference.  the GIF is the way to go.

I can't believe I missed out on 2000 points by 2 minutes! ...

In a topic I know next to nothing about ;-)  ...

Next time, I won't dither.  I'll just get in there an tell you C# guys what's what ;-)

:-)