How can I create an animated splash screen like the one in Office 2010 using C#?
Is this question about winforms or wpf?
If it's about wpf:
An animated splash screen is not more than a wpf window showing while your "Main Window" is loading. You can design this splash window with Expression Blend as explained by wischi.
You can also have a look at this code project.
For creating some kind of a loading animation: A Simple WPF Loading Animation
Just create a window with an animation defined in xaml and show it while your application is loading -> animated splash screen.
In Winforms:
You may have to override the paint method of a form to create an animation. But it's still showing another window which contains an animation while another window is loading.
I recommend using WPF for modern application design and your splashscreen problem.
Expression Blend is a nice tool for creating animations and xaml designs. But you can also design animations by writing plain xaml as well
Expression Blend Tutorials
Animation Using Expression Blend: How to create an animation
Animation Using Expression Blend: How to start animations on events
MSDN Info
Animation Overview
Using Winforms it will be much more complicated. The entire GUI is rendered by the CPU (no GPU support) but you can create a custom usercontrol and overwrite the Paint event and use GDI for drawing, but this will be much more complicated then using wpf.
if you want to make a dynamic animated splash screen like Office 2010 , i recommend you to use WPF and never think about WinForms to make dynamic animation with code !
but if you are determined of using WinForms you have to be tricky , and use one of this tricks :
• put a Flash ActiveX Object , and make your animation with Flash then link them together
• if you are good with WPF and Silverlight you can make your animation with Silverlight and view it in a WebBrowser Control , You may also use Flash or HTML5
A detailed guide for a splashscreen is here:
eExample splashscreen
Another example
Although the basics is:
1) Create a splashscreen, show it, close/dispose it
private void SplashForm()
{
SplashForm newSplashForm = new SplashForm();
newSplashForm.ShowDialog();
newSplashForm.Dispose();
}
2) Run the splashscreen on a seperate thread/backgroundworker
Thread t1 = new Thread(new ThreadStart(SplashForm));
t1.Start();
Thread.Sleep(5000); // 5 seconds
t1.Abort();
Thread.Sleep(1000);
In Winforms, the simplest way is using a PictureBox with an animated Gif on a splashscreen.
This way allows you to spend more time on your animation than your code.
In WPF it is very easy just right click on project > add new item > splash screen. This
is simple example explaining it.
Related
I want to create a level editor, using a Windows Forms Application.
Here is the layout that i want to achieve:
BLUE -> Windows form control
PURPLE -> Canvas, handled differently (Yeah, Windows forms controls too, but not for the same use of it)
I have a problem though, how to render the Canvas in a proper way without using a thread ?
(Look at my other thread here: Access object from other thread)
I thought about a timer, but I don't know if it's reliable.
Ideally a thread would be nice but Windows doesn't like the fact that you want to interact between thread so it's messed up to be polite.
If you know how to achieve that, well, thanks ! :)
I'm developing a C#.NET (4.0) WinForms application. On startup I want to have a splash screen that fills a series of datagridviews on a different form.
At the moment the main form loads that data into the DataGridViews on Form_Load but this makes the Form hang there while this is happening.
So how do I call the method that loads the values to the DataGridView from the splash screen?
I'm rather new to C#.NET, I'm trying to move away from VB.
I would have the splash screen launch the real form where the DataGridViews are, and in that form put the data loading method on its own thread. For a nice and simple and beginner way, use a BackgroundWorker. For more advanced control use Threading.
How to use background worker.
Threading Class Docs
Very good tutorial on threading
EDIT:
As you mentioned in your comment it sounds like you still don't want the form to even appear until its done loading in the data. The easy way to do this is have the main form be hidden from startup, and in the on-load event launch the splash screen, and then when the method that does the data loading returns, set the visibility to true and close the splash screen form.
There are many ways to have a form start hidden. Here is a good forum question with lot of answers on different ways to do it.
I have a Window which displays a set of MediaElements in it. They consume a lot of memory. There is a preview option.
The preview needs to be synchronized with the main Window, where the MediaElementsare loaded and playing.
Presently, I run two instances of the controls which are loaded in the main Window and preview Window and it slows the entire application down. Sometimes some of the MediaElements go blank too.
Is it possible to display an instance of a Window or UserControl, which is already running or added as a child control, in a separate Panel, Canvas or Grid.
There are known limitations with using multiple MediaElements. It isn't recommended as you can see here and here.
I would recommend you try using the WPF MediaKit or the DirectShowNet library.
The WPF MediaKit provides a direct alternative to MediaElement.
It's MediaUriElement can be used like so
<DirectShowControls:MediaUriElement
Source="{Binding ElementName=fileDialog, Path=FilePath}"
Stretch="Uniform"
VideoRenderer="VideoMixingRenderer9"
LoadedBehavior="Play"/>
Solved the Synchronization Issue with the Main Window and the Preview window by using VisualBrush and assigning the Visual of it to the Main Window and this effectively helped me to reduce the memory usage.
Referece : Link:visual-brush-in-wpf
I would like to use a regular window for splash screen, so no PNG splash screen but a normal window where I can add some bitmaps on.
What is the best way: to keep in app.xaml the loading of the main screen and put the splash screen in the constructor or somewhere in an event handler?
The splash scren itself is quite easy, just has some labels, a link, a few images and just waits a few seconds before closing, no actions to be done while waiting.
Specifically for a splash screen, it is very important to make use of the functionality introduced in .NET 3.5 for this purpose. If you simply use a vanilla Window it can take quite some time for the WPF stack to initialize, and in the interim the user will not be seeing any feedback for their "launch the app" action.
Of course this does not satisfy the requirements of the question ("use a regular window"), but if it's not acceptable I would recommend using an different technology than WPF entirely because of the problem mentioned above.
I have myself designed my WPF app dynamic splash screen in which there was an animation, dynamic software Number which changed for each and every software, a label which was updated every 1/2 ms to show some random filename in the sofware directory.
To be frank i used this link to create mine
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/38291/Implement-Splash-Screen-with-WPF
There are other links which i can provide you
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/116875/WPF-Loading-Splash-Screen
http://www.olsonsoft.com/blogs/stefanolson/post/A-better-WPF-splash-screen.aspx
I'm working on a c# wpf app in which I want a grid or rectangle to show the contents of a window in my application. It should be like a monitor which constantly shows what happens in the other window (video is being played in in it).
Is there a good way to capture the screen or some other option?
Thanks
You can take a look at the VisualBrush class - that might be able to handle what you want. I don't know if it can handle cloning video but this example shows it copying a static part of the screen.