Alex Yahkin's Animation Control in VB.NET

by William Ryan

In addition to working on content for this site, I help Devbuzz , a site dedicated to handheld development.  Recently, someone posted a question in our forums about using System.Drawing in the Compact Framework.  I referred him to Alex Yahkin's killer Article on creating an Animation control using the Compact Framework.  The person then told me they were a VB.NET progammer and couldn't read the article because it was in C#.  Anyway, I asked Alex if I could post a translation in VB.NET and he was kind enough to agree.  Please note that this is not my work..all I did is translate Alex's C# code into VB.NET.  However, I see a lot of VB.NET programmers asking for translations (for some reason you don't see many C# programmers asking for VB.NET code to be translated... but that's another issue) and figured I'd post it.  BTW, if you aren't familiar with Alex's work, he's one of the reasons that the CF has succeeded to the degree it has.  I encourage you to check out his site as well as OpenNetCF if you are trying to learn the Compact Framework, because the CF wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is without the work of these guys (and Ginny ;-)) .  If you need the whole project, I'll have it posted at Devbuzz in our Compact Framework section later this weekend.

Anyway, here's the code...

Imports System Imports System.Windows.Forms Imports System.Drawing Imports System.Drawing.Imaging Public Enum FrameLayouts As Integer     Horizontal = 0     Vertical = 1 End Enum Public Class AnimationCtl     Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Control        Private _bitmap As bitmap     Private _frameCount As Integer     Private _frameWidth As Integer     Private _frameHeight As Integer     Private _graphics As Graphics     Private _currentFrame As Integer = 0     Private _loopCount As Integer = 0     Private _loopCounter As Integer = 0     Private fTimer As Windows.Forms.Timer     Public Property Bitmap() As Bitmap         Get             Return _bitmap         End Get         Set(ByVal Value As Bitmap)             _bitmap = Value         End Set     End Property     Public AnimateCtl()     '{     '    //Cache the Graphics object     '    graphics = this.CreateGraphics();     '    //Instanciate the Timer     '    fTimer = new System.Windows.Forms.Timer();     '    //Hook up to the Timer's Tick event     '    fTimer.Tick += new System.EventHandler(this.timer1_Tick);     '}     Public Sub New()         _graphics = Me.CreateGraphics         fTimer = New System.Windows.Forms.Timer         AddHandler fTimer.Tick, AddressOf timer1_tick     End Sub     Private Sub timer1_tick(ByVal Sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)         If (_loopCount - 1) Then             Me.DrawFrame()         Else             If (_loopCount = _loopCounter) Then                 fTimer.Enabled = True             Else                 Me.DrawFrame()             End If         End If     End Sub        Public Sub StartAnimation(ByVal frWidth As Integer, ByVal DelayInterval As Integer, ByVal LoopCount As Integer)         _frameWidth = frWidth         _loopCount = LoopCount         _frameCount = Bitmap.Width / _frameWidth         _frameHeight = Bitmap.Height         Me.Size = New Size(_frameWidth, _frameHeight)         fTimer.Interval = DelayInterval         fTimer.Enabled = True     End Sub     Public Sub StopAnimation()         fTimer.Enabled = False     End Sub     Public Sub DrawFrame()         If (_currentFrame < _frameCount - 1) Then             _currentFrame += 1         Else             _loopCounter += 1             _currentFrame = 0         End If         Draw(_currentFrame)     End Sub     Private Sub Draw(ByVal iframe As Integer)         Dim xLocation As Integer = iframe * _frameWidth         Dim rect As Rectangle = New Rectangle(xLocation, 0, _frameWidth, _frameHeight)         _graphics.DrawImage(_bitmap, 0, 0, rect, GraphicsUnit.Pixel)     End Sub    End Class