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Animating in Response To User Interaction (VB)

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by Christian Wenz

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The Animation control in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit is not just a control but a whole framework to add animations to a control. The animations can start automatically or may be triggered by user interaction, e.g. by clicking with the mouse.

Overview

The Animation control in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit is not just a control but a whole framework to add animations to a control. The animations can start automatically or may be triggered by user interaction, e.g. by clicking with the mouse.

Steps

First of all, include the ScriptManager in the page; then, the ASP.NET AJAX library is loaded, making it possible to use the Control Toolkit:

<asp:ScriptManager ID="asm" runat="server" />

The animation will be applied to a panel of text which looks like this:

<asp:Panel ID="panelShadow" runat="server" CssClass="panelClass">
 ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework for quickly creating a new generation of more 
 efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work 
 across all the most popular browsers.<br />
 ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework for quickly creating a new generation of more 
 efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work 
 across all the most popular browsers.<br />
 ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework for quickly creating a new generation of more 
 efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work 
 across all the most popular browsers.<br />
</asp:Panel>

In the associated CSS class for the panel, define a nice background color and also set a fixed width for the panel:

<style type="text/css">
 .panelClass {background-color: lime; width: 300px;}
</style>

Then, add the AnimationExtender to the page, providing an ID, the TargetControlID attribute and the obligatory runat="server":

<ajaxToolkit:AnimationExtender ID="ae" runat="server" TargetControlID="Panel1">

Within the <Animations> node, there are five ways to start the animation via user interaction (the missing element is <OnLoad> which is executed once the whole page has been fully loaded):

  • <OnClick> (mouse click on the control)
  • <OnHoverOut> (mouse leaves the control)
  • <OnHoverOver> (mouse hovers over a control, stopping the <OnHoverOut> animation)
  • <OnMouseOut> (mouse leaves a control)
  • <OnMouseOver> (mouse hovers over a control, not stopping the <OnMouseOut> animation)

In this scenario, <OnClick> is used. When the user clicks on the panel, it is resized and fades out at the same time.

<ajaxToolkit:AnimationExtender ID="ae" runat="server" TargetControlID="Panel1">
 <Animations>
 <OnClick>
 <Parallel>
 <FadeOut Duration="1.5" Fps="24" />
 <Resize Width="1000" Height="150" Unit="px" />
 </Parallel>
 </OnClick>
 </Animations>
</ajaxToolkit:AnimationExtender>

A mouse click starts the animation

A mouse click starts the animation (Click to view full-size image)