How can I do this in VB.NET? (sample video included)

[Nikole]

Hi my dear guys. I want to increase the user experience in my VB.NET apps. Today i've created a mockup in Expression Blend to have an idea that i want to do.

I've uploaded a sample video, please check it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx0PhSxflQw

How can i do this? GDI+? DirectX? API? Component?

I've tried telerik for WinForms but i'm a bit complicated. any other way??

please help me, best regards.

[cicatrix]

This is possible with windows.forms without any drawing at all but the performance will be poor. GDI+ also wouldn't ensure a smooth movement, I would have suggested WPF if only I had some experience with it. DirectX is the next logical step.

[Nikole]

This is possible with windows.forms without any drawing at all but the performance will be poor. GDI+ also wouldn't ensure a smooth movement, I would have suggested WPF if only I had some experience with it. DirectX is the next logical step.

Thanks, i'm a beginer in WPF. I've tried to do it in Expression Blend and edit before in VB2008 , but i'm not good in Expression Blend. I've put a grid in Expression Blend and few controls and i added the effect SlideIn and SlideOut.

Can i create an effect and add more controls after in VB 2008 IDE? or all need to be designed in Expression blend? If i make an effect called "SlideIn" in Ex.Blend, how can i call the effect with vb code?

[toecutter]

VBDT's free Screen Shot (utility) behaves similar when hiding so maybe you can get something from that.

regards
toe

[Megalith]

Hi, well i'd be tempted to do this with silverlight (or flash) either can be ran locally or remotely

[Nikole]

Hi, well i'd be tempted to do this with silverlight (or flash) either can be ran locally or remotely

Hi, my app have a 3D menu and i found few nice flash animations in Flashden, but uses 100% of CPU with WMMODE=Transparent. In wmode=Windows or Opaque uses 20-30% CPU. Because a high utilizacion of cpu with flash animations i'm learning WPF

[Megalith]

i hate flash if im honest lol, i do however find it good for animated menus within html environments. I have a feeling you wish to have a 3d menu for any/all your vb.net projects. with that in mind then i guess direct x is the way to go. again cant comment on wpf (need to learn it myself really)

[boops boops]

I've used GDI+ for quite a few little animations before, so this thread had me wondering: just what are the limits of GDI+? I thought I ought to be able to make an animation at least like the one in Nicole's video.

So I made a sliding animation of a 32-bit image (with transparency). The background is full screen (1680x1050 or whatever it is) and the sliding image is 3/4 full screen in the x and y directions. And it doesn't look too bad, both on my rather mediocre 2GB twin-core and on my feeble little Nano netbook.

If anyone's interested in seeing the result, I threw the project (excluding Bin and Obj) into a Zip: see attachment. It's fairly large because of the images in resources - especially the 32-bit PNG which gobbles space. And I had to shrink the images quite a lot to meet the forum's limit.

I think this represents just about the limit of what you can do with GDI+. There are several technical considerations, for example pre-sizing the images, painting them with DrawImageUnscaled and using PixelFormat=32bppPArgb (premultiplied). It also took quite a bit of tinkering with the timer interval and pixel distances to produce a smooth looking animation. I'm sure a technique such as WPF or Flash that takes better advantage of hardware acceleration is going have less limitations and on the whole better results.

If you feel like running it: enjoy!

regards, BB

[Nikole]

thanks! works very nice!