ColorAnimation Class

An animation updates the value of a property over a period of time. An animation effect can be subtle, such as moving a Shape a few pixels left or right, or dramatic, such as enlarging an object to 200 times its original size while spinning it and changing its color. To create an animation, you associate an animation with an object's property value.

The ColorAnimation class creates a transition between two target values. To set its target values, use its From, To, and By properties. The following table summarizes how the From, To, and By properties can be used together or separately to determine an animation's target values.

If you set both the To and By properties, the To property takes precedence and the By property is ignored.

To use other interpolation methods or to animate between more than two target values, use a ColorAnimationUsingKeyFrames object.

The following example shows how to use ColorAnimation to animate the background color of a StackPanel.

<StackPanel x:Name="myStackPanel" Background="Red"
  Loaded="Start_Animation">
  <StackPanel.Resources>
    <Storyboard x:Name="colorStoryboard">

      <!-- Animate the background color of the canvas from red to green
        over 4 seconds. -->
      <ColorAnimation BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="myStackPanel" 
        Storyboard.TargetProperty="(Panel.Background).(SolidColorBrush.Color)"
        From="Red" To="Green" Duration="0:0:4" />

    </Storyboard>
  </StackPanel.Resources>
</StackPanel>

Notice in the example above that the property value being animated (Color), belongs to a SolidColorBrush object which is not named or even explicitly declared. This indirect targeting is accomplished using the special syntax below.

Storyboard.TargetProperty="(Panel.Background).(SolidColorBrush.Color)"

Alternatively, you could explicitly create the SolidColorBrush, name it, and target its Color property directly. The example below shows how to create the same animation as the previous one except it uses direct property targeting.

<StackPanel Loaded="Start_Animation">
  <StackPanel.Resources>
    <Storyboard x:Name="colorStoryboard">
      <!-- Animate the background color of the canvas from red to green
        over 4 seconds. -->
      <ColorAnimation BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="mySolidColorBrush"
        Storyboard.TargetProperty="Color" From="Red" To="Green" Duration="0:0:4" />
    </Storyboard>
  </StackPanel.Resources>

  <StackPanel.Background>
    <SolidColorBrush x:Name="mySolidColorBrush" Color="Red" />
  </StackPanel.Background>

</StackPanel>

Windows Phone OS

Windows Phone

Reference

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