Binding the From and To properties of an animation in XAML

08-07-2008 4:26 PM |

I have a UserControl that defines a VisualState in XAML where I would like to bind the From and To properties of the DoubleAnimation to properties of the UserControl.  Is this possible?  I can create the Storyboard just fine in the code-behind, but I don't know if I can create those same bindings in the XAML of the UserControl.

Example:

<UserControl x:Class="MyUserControl">
    <Grid>
       <VisualState>   
          <StoryBoard>  
             <DoubleAnimation From="{Binding Prop1}" To="{Binding Prop2}" etc.../>

...

public class MyUserControl : UserControl
{
    public Double Prop1 {get; set;}
    public Double Prop2 {get; set;}
}

 
When I run this I get an exception in the XAML parser.
 

 

Re: Binding the From and To properties of an animation in XAML

08-07-2008 5:17 PM |

So I misspoke. Bindings are the wrong approach here, however the spirit of what I'm trying to do remains, which is to set the 'From' property of an animation to a property that exists on the UserControl in XAML.  I understand why bindings wouldn't work as you can't call SetBinding on an animation object.

Unless I'm missing something, there isn't a way to do this in either Silverlight or WPF correct?
 

Re: Binding the From and To properties of an animation in XAML

08-17-2008 6:41 PM |

Hello Allen,

Allen Chen – MSFT:

It can be done in WPF but unfortunately in Silverlight binding can only be set on FrameworkElement or it's descendent class.

 

I'm sure you cannot comment much on this sort of thing, but are there plans for "ElementName" style binding in the RTM, or failing that, ever?  IMHO, the whole property binding thing in WPF is one of the better parts of the framework.  I was stunned to find I could not do "ElementName" style binding in Silverlight and got grumpy having to do all kinds of contortions in my code to get the same effect--it felt like having to use WinForms all over again.  Doing all the binding in XAML really cuts down on the amount of (useless) code you need to write.