Executing Several Animations after Each Other (VB)

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. It allows to run several animations one after the other.

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. It allows to run several animations one after the other.

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, use <OnLoad> to run the animations once the page has been fully loaded. Generally, <OnLoad> only accepts one animation. The Animation framework allows you to join several animations into one using the <Sequence> element. All animations within <Sequence> are executed one after the other. Here is the a possible markup for the AnimationExtender control, first making the panel wider and then decreasing its height:

<ajaxToolkit:AnimationExtender ID="ae" runat="server" TargetControlID="Panel1">
 <Animations>
 <OnLoad>
 <Sequence>
 <Resize Width="1000" Unit="px" />
 <Resize Height="150" Unit="px" />
 </Sequence>
 </OnLoad>
 </Animations>
</ajaxToolkit:AnimationExtender>

When you run this script, the panel first gets wider and then smaller.

First the width is increased

First the width is increased (Click to view full-size image)

Then the height is decreased

Then the height is decreased (Click to view full-size image)