30.3. Understanding WPF's Animation Services

In addition to the graphical rendering services you examined in Chapter 29, WPF supplies a programming interface to support animation services. The term animation may bring to mind visions of spinning company logos, a sequence of rotating image resources (to provide the illusion of movement), text bouncing across the screen, or specific types of programs such as video games or multimedia applications.

While WPF's animation APIs could certainly be used for such purposes, animation can be used any time you wish to give an application additional flair. For example, you could build an animation for a button on a screen that magnifies slightly when the mouse cursor hovers within its boundaries (and shrinks back once the mouse cursor moves beyond the boundaries). Or you could animate a window so that it closes using a particular visual appearance, such as slowly fading into transparency. In fact, WPF's animation support can be used within any sort of application (a business application, multimedia programs, video games, etc.) whenever you wish to provide a more engaging user experience.