WPF - Get airport display type transition when data changes

Question

A client has asked for a display to flick over like an airport display screen, ie each row flicks over when information changes.

I am not sure which is the best control to use, or the method of getting each row to transform one after the other.

any suggestions woul b gratfully accepted

John

Answer 1

Here's what I would do in general concept..

1. Make a regular panel of, say 50px high. (This is arbitrary but this panel just holds the size in place so the control doesn't shrink with its contents.)
2. Create a panel inside that one that will be the 'animated' panel.
3. When it's time for information to animate, create a storyboard that uses a transformation to "stretch" the height down to 0, change the content to the updated information, then tranform stretch the height back to 50px. This will create the illusion that the panel is flipping over.

If you make this a user control, then you could simply add however many "rows" you needed of this control to a StackPanel to make your screen.

Answer 2

The best way of representing this effect easily is to randomize the text during the change.

Patrick Long implemented this effect as a custom animation here