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I'm thinking about how to do a color transition for a line in WPF. I'm looking for this to be as simple and succinct as possible, and also the "correct" way in the WPF world.

This is what I have, taking the line from it's previous color to Colors.LightGreen in 0.1 seconds.

Line TargetLine = GetMyTargetLine();

var s = new Storyboard(){ Duration = new Duration(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.1f)) };
s.Children.Add(new ColorAnimation(Colors.LightGreen, s.Duration));
Storyboard.SetTarget(s.Children[0], TargetLine);
Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(s.Children[0], new PropertyPath("Stroke.Color"));
s.Begin();

And it is functional. Is this the proper way to do it in the WPF mindset? It just seems very clunky and verbose way to express what I want to do. Thoughts?

Edit: With Snowbear's advice I can at least get it to 4 lines. The entire context of the storyboard is right here so I don't think it's a big deal to reference the only child by index. If it were any more complex than this I'd agree that it should be a named variable.

    Line TargetLine = GetMyTargetLine();        

    var story = new Storyboard() { Children = { new ColorAnimation(color, new Duration(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.1))) } };
    Storyboard.SetTarget(story.Children[0], TargetLine);
    Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(story.Children[0], new PropertyPath("Stroke.Color"));
    story.Begin();
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    \$\begingroup\$ By the way I don't yet have the 150 rep to tag this properly so if anyone wants to step in it'd be appreciated. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 29, 2011 at 5:39

2 Answers 2

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1) I believe it is not a good practice to give variables one-letter names. Storyboard story = ...
2) I believe you can specify Duration in ColorAnimation only. And do not set it for Storyboard.
3) I would introduce variable for ColorAnimation because s.Children[0] looks weird to me when I know that it is ColorAnimation.
4) Strangely you are using 0.1f where parameter is double anyway.
5) I would consider using object and collection initializers for Storyboard.Children.
6) Optionally I would think on removing storyboard variable and start it immediatly after constructing.

Result: my code looks differently, but readability changes are subjective:

Line TargetLine = line;

var duration = new Duration(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.1));
var colorAnimation = new ColorAnimation(Colors.LightGreen, duration);
Storyboard.SetTarget(colorAnimation, TargetLine);
Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(colorAnimation, new PropertyPath("Stroke.Color"));

new Storyboard {Children = {colorAnimation}}.Begin();
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No need for a storyboard:

var colourAnimation = new ColorAnimation(Colors.Red, new Duration(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.1)));
line.Stroke.ApplyAnimationClock(SolidColorBrush.ColorProperty, colourAnimation.CreateClock()); 
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