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The Importance of the “Experimental” Transitioning Content Control

The TransitioningContentControl, developed by Ruurd Boeke, is one of the few Silverlight controls striving for what I am calling “data-driven animation.” You can load content from a database—let’s say an Observable Collection of data—, display one item from this Collection in the TransitioningContentControl and then transition to the next item in the Collection—to be displayed in the TransitioningContentControl. This transition is, by default, a story-board animation. Awe… some!

TransitioningContentControl with UserControl Collection Sample

Workflow…

  • Compose a “previz” storyboard in a separate file (I open a XAML-only file in Expression Blend among my “packed XAML” samples in my Silverlight BiggestBox).
  • Edit a copy of the TransitioningContentControl style in the actual layout.
  • Add a new, named VisualState to the VisualStateGroup x:Name="PresentationStates" in the Template setter of your copy of the TransitioningContentControl style.
  • Set the Setter Property="Transition" value to the name of this VisualState in the TransitioningContentControl style.
  • When the transition is triggered, ensure that it does not trigger again during the transition. This will cause an exception. Use the TransitionCompleted event in a strategy to avoid this exception.

Composing the “previz” storyboard is the first time in my Microsoft developer life that a business need demands the use of storyboard composition (within the Expression Blend 4 timeframe of course).

Now some critiques…

  • You should not need to use a style to customize the transition animation. This should not be the only way of customizing the transition.
  • Silverlight, animation-based behaviors, like the FluidMoveBehavior should be pluggable/Blendable into the control.
  • No MSDN documentation (still considered “experimental”?).

Beyond the Transitioning Content Control?

Expression Blend Architect Kenny Young suggested years ago that Behaviors allow developers to avoid resorting to building storyboards by hand for relatively simple animations. Animating the event when an item is added/removed to/from a ListBox should be considered a ‘simple’ animation. A Behavior should handle this.

The Transitioning Content Control does not support behaviors out of the box. In fact, to customize the animations that come with this control requires knowledge of “templating” and building storyboards. This would explain to me why this control might still be considered “experimental.”

So I tried for several days to avoid using this control by trying several techniques based on Behaviors. These are some of my findings:

  • The FluidMoveBehavior can be configured to animate Self or Children. I have been unable to get the expected results from FluidMoveBehavior in ‘self-mode’… There is an old sample marked “Download AppliesTo: Self Example” by Microsoft’s Kirupa Chinnathambi that shows Self working for Silverlight 3—however, when I upgrade the sample to Silverlight 4 it stops working! By the way, where the hell is Kenny Young?
  • One workaround that should deal with this FluidMoveBehavior in ‘self-mode’ issue involves using an ItemsControl that is meant to only hold one item. Then ItemsControl.ItemsPanel can hold this behavior in its template. I tried this without success (but was probably confused with drowsy, late-night frustration).

Related Links

https://github.com/BryanWilhite/