Text animation in Windows Forms

Question

I was wondering if there was a way of adding a sort of animation to text displayed on a form.

What I had in mind when I thought of this was kind of similar to what you can do with text in PowerPoint (i.e. a typewriter-like animation where the text is typed one at a time, have the whole textbox appear with a certain effect etc), I'm just looking to find out what you can do using Windows Forms.

Currently I'm using a textbox to display information on my form application, though in hindsight I realise labels would have worked just as well.

EDIT: Turns out I was using labels after all, I just gave it a name with 'textbox' inside for lack of a better description.

These kind of animations are hard to get smooth and wear off *really* quickly. Use a Label with AutoEllipsis = True, you get the tooltip for free. — Hans Passant, Sep 12 '12 at 14:29
Though its possible to do in Winforms, I suggest you use WPF. WPF has a lot more tools available in its arsenal to pull off these kinds of special effects. Also consider, if you stick with Winforms, looking into DirectX — Icemanind, Sep 12 '12 at 16:01

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 27 '18 at 10:00

4

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
    int _charIndex = 0;
    string _text = "Hello World!!";
    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    private void button_TypewriteText_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        _charIndex = 0;
        label1.Text = string.Empty;
        Thread t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(this.TypewriteText));
        t.Start();
    }

    private void TypewriteText()
    {
        while (_charIndex < _text.Length)
        {
            Thread.Sleep(500);
            label1.Invoke(new Action(() =>
            {
                label1.Text += _text[_charIndex];
            }));
            _charIndex++;
        }
    }
}

edited Jul 27 '18 at 10:00

wonea

3,987
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answered Sep 12 '12 at 15:10

jrob

522
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For other types of animations the [do-net-transitions](http://code.google.com/p/dot-net-transitions/) library works quite well at producing smooth transitions. – jrob Sep 12 '12 at 15:13
Thanks for this @jrob, what exactly is `InitializeComponent()` doing? – Ian Campbell Jul 12 '13 at 02:52
1

@IanCampbell See [Very Simple definition of InitializeComponent(); Method](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12297079/very-simple-definition-of-initializecomponent-method) – jrob Jul 22 '13 at 20:53

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 12 '12 at 15:06

Now, I personally wouldn't do this because gratuitous animations tend to annoy users. I'd only use animation sparingly - when it really makes sense.

That said, you can certainly do something like:

 string stuff = "This is some text that looks like it is being typed.";
 int pos = 0;
 Timer t;

 public Form1()
 {
     InitializeComponent();
     t = new Timer();
     t.Interval = 500;
     t.Tick += new EventHandler(t_Tick);
 }

 void t_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
 {
     if (pos < stuff.Length)
     {
         textBox1.AppendText(stuff.Substring(pos, 1));
         ++pos;
     }
     else
     {
         t.Stop();
     }
 }

 private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
 {
     pos = 0;
     textBox1.Clear();
     t.Start();
 }

or something like that. It'll tick off ever half second and add another character to the multi-line text box. Just an example of what someone could do.

Text animation in Windows Forms

2 Answers2

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