Animation

[filburt1]

I have a form with (to make things simple) a ListBox control and a Frame control, both streching vertically to occupy the height of the whole form.

As I want to accomodate users running at lower resoltions, I want to make the Frame "autohidable" , meaning that normally I want the ListBox to take up the whole form, and clicking a button makes the Frame slide into view.

I can do this without animation (just change the Visible property), but how can I make animation to do this? It should be something like the a menu sliding in Windows 98, a task pane sizing in Windows XP, etc.

I could just do it in a For loop, incrementing the size of the frame by 10 twips each time, but the Frame would resize faster or slower on different systems.

Just reply if this even makes sense!

[peet]

You could use a timer control, and add the code that do the "animation" in the Timer event. The Timers time event should trigger with the same interval even if the computers CPU varies..

[peet]

eh.. that came out a bit wrong.. dont't think that one computers cpu will vary that much... but you get my point ?

[Mark Sreeves]

Yep! makes sense to me

this uses a picture box and a menu item called mnuX

Option Explicit

Private Sub Form_Load()
Picture1.Left = 0
Picture1.Width = Me.ScaleWidth

End Sub

Private Sub mnuX_Click()


If mnuX.Caption = "hide" Then
  hidePic
mnuX.Caption = "show"
Else
showPic
mnuX.Caption = "hide"

End If



End Sub

Private Sub Pause(secs As Single)

Dim sngStopVal As Single
sngStopVal = Timer + secs

While sngStopVal > Timer
    DoEvents

Wend

End Sub

Private Sub showPic()


  
  While Picture1.Top > Me.ScaleHeight - Picture1.Height
  
    Picture1.Top = Picture1.Top - 100
    Pause 0.01
  Wend
  

End Sub
Private Sub hidePic()
 
  While Picture1.Top < Me.Height
  
    Picture1.Top = Picture1.Top + 100
    Pause 0.01
  Wend

End Sub

[filburt1]

While it's not essential to all life on Earth, but will the code produce animation that runs smoother on faster machines and crappier on slower machines?