Simple button animations

Question

I am trying to learn .NET programming. As a part of my learning, I tried to make some effects on buttons. It is working... but not as smooth as I imagined! Is there any better way to do this? Thank you in advance!

My need:

There are 3 buttons. When you hover the mouse over one of them, it expands and when you mouse out from that button, it returns to its initial size.

private void button1_MouseHover(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        button1.BackColor = Color.White;
        button1.Width = 130;
        button1.BringToFront();            
    }

    private void button1_MouseLeave(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        button1.BackColor = Color.Red;
        button1.Width = 75;         
    }

    private void button2_MouseHover(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        button2.BackColor = Color.Gray;
        button2.Width = 130;
        button2.BringToFront();            
    }

    private void Form1_MouseLeave(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        button2.BackColor = Color.Red;
        button2.Width = 75;

    }

    private void button3_MouseHover(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        button3.BackColor = Color.DimGray;
        button3.Width = 130;
        button3.BringToFront();
    }

    private void button3_MouseLeave(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        button3.BackColor = Color.Red;
        button3.Width = 75;

    }

Answer 1

So first off, you don't want to do the exact same thing 3 times. Create a single method to add the appropriate handlers for a button, and then just write the code once to handle any given button.

Note that you can go into the expand/contract tick handlers and use the percentComplete value to set the height as well, to move the color along a spectrum (this would involve some mathematics of colors to do though) or to alter any other aspect of the button. If you're really motivated to generalize it you could add a parameter to the method of Action<double> that does something to the object based on the given percent progress.

public void AddAnimation(Button button)
{
    var expandTimer = new System.Windows.Forms.Timer();
    var contractTimer = new System.Windows.Forms.Timer();

    expandTimer.Interval = 10;//can adjust to determine the refresh rate
    contractTimer.Interval = 10;

    DateTime animationStarted = DateTime.Now;

    //TODO update as appropriate or make it a parameter
    TimeSpan animationDuration = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(250);
    int initialWidth = 75;
    int endWidth = 130;

    button.MouseHover += (_, args) =>
    {
        contractTimer.Stop();
        expandTimer.Start();
        animationStarted = DateTime.Now;
        button.BackColor = Color.DimGray;
    };

    button.MouseLeave += (_, args) =>
    {
        expandTimer.Stop();
        contractTimer.Start();
        animationStarted = DateTime.Now;
        button.BackColor = Color.Red;
    };

    expandTimer.Tick += (_, args) =>
    {
        double percentComplete = (DateTime.Now - animationStarted).Ticks
            / (double)animationDuration.Ticks;

        if (percentComplete >= 1)
        {
            expandTimer.Stop();
        }
        else
        {
            button.Width = (int)(initialWidth +
                (endWidth - initialWidth) * percentComplete);
        }
    };

    contractTimer.Tick += (_, args) =>
    {
        double percentComplete = (DateTime.Now - animationStarted).Ticks
            / (double)animationDuration.Ticks;

        if (percentComplete >= 1)
        {
            contractTimer.Stop();
        }
        else
        {
            button.Width = (int)(endWidth -
                (endWidth - initialWidth) * percentComplete);
        }
    };
}

Answer 2

If you are using WinForms, animations are going to be rather painful and you will have to handle them yourself via Timer objects.

If you are getting into .NET and want to make cool-looking applications with animatons and styling, I highly recommend you look at WPF instead. It can do animations very easily though C# or XAML.

While it is still possible in WinForms, it will take far more development time where as those features are built into WPF already (and optimized).