This is rather useless, but it's a nifty procedure for introducing a form to the screen that I just wrote. I don't feel like posting a demo, so I'll leave that up to you. You'll need five forms. Form1, Form2, Form3, Form4, and Main. The Form#'s should have a background color of straight green (RGB 0, 255, 0), as should the Main form. The Form#'s should be border style 0 (none) and the Main form can be whatever the hell you want. Main should be set to CenterScreen, too. You'll have to declare the Sleep API call, too. With that said, on with the show:

Make the startup object Main. Pop it open and put this in the Form_Load.
Code:
Private Sub Form_Load()
 Call OpenAnim
End Sub
Now, of course, we've gotta make the OpenAnim sub. Excuse my sloppy coding.
Code:
Sub OpenAnim()
' Form1 and 2 are horizontal.
' Form3 and 4 are vertical.
Main.Visible = True
Main.Visible = False 'This is neccesary to get form Main to set it's corrdinates. That's VB for you- go figure.
DoEvents

Part0:
'Starting placement... This'll put the four forms where they need to be, hopefully independent of the placement of Main and your screen resolution.
Form1.Height = Screen.Height / 50
Form1.Width = Main.Width
Form1.Top = Main.Top
Form1.Left = 0 - Form1.Width

Form2.Height = Screen.Height / 50
Form2.Width = Main.Width
Form2.Top = Main.Top + Main.Height - Form2.Height
Form2.Left = Screen.Width

Form3.Width = Screen.Width / 50
Form3.Height = Main.Height
Form3.Top = 0 - Form3.Height
Form3.Left = Main.Left

Form4.Width = Screen.Width / 50
Form4.Height = Main.Height
Form4.Top = Screen.Height
Form4.Left = Main.Left + Main.Width - Form4.Width

Form1.Visible = True
Form2.Visible = True
Form3.Visible = True
Form4.Visible = True
DoEvents

Part1: 'This is where the first stage of animation takes place.
For i = 1 To 400
 If Form1.Left < Main.Left Then
  Form1.Left = Form1.Left + 50
  Else
  Form1.Left = Main.Left
 End If
 
 If Form2.Left > Main.Left Then
  Form2.Left = Form2.Left - 50
  Else
  Form2.Left = Main.Left
 End If
 
 If Form3.Top < Main.Top Then
  Form3.Top = Form3.Top + 37.5
  Else
  Form3.Top = Main.Top
 End If
 
 If Form4.Top > Main.Top Then
  Form4.Top = Form4.Top - 37.5
  Else
  Form4.Top = Main.Top
 End If

If Form1.Left = Main.Left And Form2.Left = Main.Left And Form3.Top = Main.Top And Form4.Top = Main.Top Then
 GoTo Part2
End If

 DoEvents
 Sleep 10 'You can meddle with this to taste. Smaller numbers are faster.
Next i
 
Part2:
Sleep 500 'Ditto.
DoEvents

BufferHeight = Main.Height
BufferWidth = Main.Width
Main.Height = 30
Main.Width = 40
Main.Left = Screen.Width / 2 - Main.Width / 2
Main.Top = Screen.Height / 2 - Main.Height / 2

Main.Visible = True
DoEvents

For i = 1 To 800 'This is the second stage of animation.
 Main.Left = Screen.Width / 2 - Main.Width / 2
 Main.Top = Screen.Height / 2 - Main.Height / 2
 DoEvents
 If Main.Width < BufferWidth Then
  Main.Width = Main.Width + (10 * 2)
  Else
  Main.Width = BufferWidth
 End If
 If Main.Height < BufferHeight Then
  Main.Height = Main.Height + (7.5 * 2)
  Else
  Main.Height = BufferHeight
 End If
 Main.Left = Screen.Width / 2 - Main.Width / 2
 Main.Top = Screen.Height / 2 - Main.Height / 2
 DoEvents
 Sleep 10
 If Main.Height = BufferHeight And Main.Width = BufferWidth Then GoTo Part4
Next i

Part4:
Form1.Hide
Form2.Hide
Form3.Hide
Form4.Hide

For i = 255 To 0 Step -1 'Here we change the color of Main from black to green. You can mess with this to change it to whatever you want.
 Main.BackColor = RGB(0, i, 0)
 DoEvents
 Sleep 10
Next i

End Sub
And that's a wrap. You can tack more code onto the end of this to make all the controls that may or may not be on the Main form appear. If anybody else has any nifty animations, post 'em here. I'm always interested in this kind of thing.

~Zero the Inestimable