Introduction

Animation is an ActiveX control that wraps the SysAnimate32 window class. It is optimized for Visual Basic 6.0, but should also work in any other environment that supports COM controls.

Basics

The control superclasses the native animation window class of Windows: SysAnimate32. Although I tried to wrap all features of this window class (status: Windows 2008 R2), some things may be missing. In these cases you may try using the Win32 API and handle the control as a native animation window.

Requirements

Animation Unicode runs on the following operating systems:

• Windows XP (SP3 or later)
• Windows Server 2003 (SP2 or later)
• Windows Vista (SP2 or later)
• Windows Server 2008 (SP2 or later)
• Windows 7 (SP1 or later)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP1 or later)
• Systems supported by Wine (Wine is a Win32 subsystem for alternative operating systems) - limited support
• ReactOS (a free Windows XP clone) - limited support

Some features have additional requirements which are mentioned in the affected feature's documentation.
Limited support means, that I won't invest much work to support those systems. If a feature works on a system marked with "limited support" - fine; if it does not and it's easy to fix, I'll fix it, but if it's difficult to fix, I probably won't fix it. Also I will test the control much less on those systems.

Support

Although there's no entitlement to support, you've good chances to get help if you either post to the forums or send me a mail.
Bugs and feature requests should be entered into the bug tracking system.

Animation License

         Animation
         ~~~~~~~~~
         License for use and distribution
         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

         Animation Copyright (C) 2003-2012 Timo Kunze

         This library comes for free. You can redistribute it, but
         not modify it. If you use this library in your program,
         it would be nice (but isn't necessary) to mention its
         author Timo Kunze together with a link to his website
         http://www.timosoft-software.de in your software's
         About dialog.

         This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
         but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
         MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
    

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to:

• Wine Headquarters, because Wine helped me a lot on understanding how Windows is working.
• Microsoft, for ATL, WTL and Visual Studio - great libraries and a great IDE
• Geoff Chappell, for his website about undocumented Win32 API stuff.
• Igor Tandetnik, for his great help on learning ATL and WTL
• Dimitri van Heesch, for Doxygen
• Nikos Bozinis, for his awesome help with the Vista drag'n'drop stuff.
• Christian Lütgens, for his great work as beta-tester and for his help when I needed a 2nd opinion on some decisions.
• All donators
• For great music: Amon Amarth, Heaven Shall Burn, Arch Enemy, Deadlock, Draconian, Ensiferum, Epica, Sirenia, Tristania, Nightwish (with Tarja), Delain, Lacuna Coil, Battlelore, Volbeat, Dimmu Borgir, Guns N' Roses

FAQ

1. Why is event xyz not fired?
Firing an event is relative time-consuming, even if the event isn't handled by the application at all. Therefore I implemented a DisabledEvents property which can be used to deactivate certain events.
By default many events are deactivated.