Add Office 2013-like animations to my C# application

Question

So, in Office 2013, the applications have animations such as a "smooth typing" animation, along with things such as the email list in Outlook smoothly moving emails rather than just deleting one out of the list, or having the Backstage View smoothly slide out from the side of the screen. I'd like to add some similar animations to my applications in the future.

I have some ideas in my head about how to animate these, but before I dive into a lot of custom work I was wondering if anyone knew of a framework or something that added support for this type of thing easily.

Also, I have previously done all my work in WinForms- in your opinion, would it be better for me to take this as an opportunity to start learning WPF? I've heard a few times it's more "animation friendly".

Thanks!

Answer 1

Take this as an opportunity to learn WPF. WPF is great with animations and it uses hardware acceleration to increase performance (provided you're not running on WinXP or anything before that).

You can also look into acquiring Microsoft Blend which will help you create animations in your WPF applications.

I would also suggest this book. I haven't seen a better resource than this.