Is there any way to get smooth (preferably Windows default) animations in my .NET winforms app?

Question

In my application I'd like to provide some animations while a lengthy operation is in progress. Currently I'm at the "connecting to server" stage, which typically takes over 5 seconds.

During this I'd like to display some animation to the user. I've already implemented the popular solution with a PictureBox and an AJAX loading gif, but I don't find it pretty enough. IMO it's not smooth enough and pretty loading gifs are hard to come by. Not to mention the lack of proper alpha which makes the blending awkward.

Ideally I'd like to borrow the animations from Windows and display those just as Windows does, but if there is something even better-looking, then that would do too. And I wouldn't be surprised if Windows animations were not publicly available either.

So - is this possible without too much effort (animations are not what the app is about, just something to pass time)? And a secondary question - where could I get my hands on pretty animations?

Answer 1

If you are using Visual Studio, take a look at the animations that are installed with it. They should be located under the VS folder:

...\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\VS2010ImageLibrary\1033\VS2010ImageLibrary\Animations

If you don't have this folder, you can run the installer again - it is an installation feature, and I think it gets installed by default, but can't remember.

Older versions of Visual Studio will also have images/animations installed, but they may look outdated.