Animation

Abstract

When it comes to making user interfaces that make people go “wow,” you have many of the pieces of the puzzle: media (video/audio/images), brushes to easily create interesting surfaces, and a set of controls that can be completely re-skinned. There’s one final big piece to the user interface support in Silverlight: animation. Silverlight makes it easy to make elements of user interfaces move, and when you put together the various components into a full application, you end up with great visual effect. Any dependency property can potentially be influenced by animation. If you give some thought to the various properties discussed throughout this book, such as transforms and brushes, it’s possible to start coming up with a variety of creative effects to jazz up a user interface. For example, by shifting offsets in gradient stops, a gradient can appear to move from one side of the surface it is filling to the other side, creating a shimmer effect. This chapter will delve into how to use animation and also discuss the support Expression Blend provides for working with animation.