MultiColumn ComboBox Animation

[Bryan Farrell]

Hello,

We are using the telerik MultiColumn ComboBox for an application that will be run by most users thru a remote connection.  Our network bandwidth is limited and we are finding that the fade animations of the gridview portion are making the UI very sluggish.  We are using the Control Default theme for now and do not want to have to disable theming completely to remove the animations.  Is there a way to remove the animation effects for the control but still keep the rest of the theme styling?

Thanks!

[Jack]

Hello Joe,

Thank you for this question. Yes, you can stop all animations and all styles will apply correctly. In order to do so, you have to set the AllowAnimations property to false:

ThemeResolutionService.AllowAnimations = false;

I hope this helps. Should you have any other questions, do not hesitate to write us.

Regards,
Jack
the Telerik team

[Bryan Farrell]

Hi,

I tried setting the ThemeResolutionService.AllowAnimations = false in the program main startup procedure and also in the form constructor.  I also tried the BitmapCache and SuspendAnimations commands as mentioned in this thread http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/winforms/general-discussions/strange-behaviour-of-all-radcontrols-component-that-involve-mouse-over-or-mouse-click.aspx

After doing this I am still getting animations in the controls on the form.  The controls that still have animations are the MultiColumnComboBox and RadDateTimePicker.  Both of these controls are still having the context menu fade out after an item is selected or the control looses focus.  Basically any time the pop-up window closes it fades out even with the animations turned off as you have mentioned.

Also I should point out that the windows forms application in question is currently being used in an RDC session and will eventually be deployed to the clients via Citrix.  I know there was some mention of this in the link I posted above so I wanted to mention that to you.

Thanks again.

[Jack]

Hi Joe,

The AllowAnimations property has no affect on popup windows. You can disable the popup animation of the multi-column combobox by setting the DropDownAnimationEnabled property to false:


radMultiColumnComboBox1.MultiColumnComboBoxElement.DropDownAnimationEnabled = false;

For RadDateTimePicker you should use the following code:

RadDateTimePickerCalendar calendarBehavior = radDateTimePicker1.DateTimePickerElement.GetCurrentBehavior() as RadDateTimePickerCalendar;
calendarBehavior.PopupControl.AnimationEnabled = false;

In case you have further questions, I will be glad to help.

Kind regards,
Jack
the Telerik team

[Bryan Farrell]

Hi Jack,

Thanks for your reply.  I tried the code that you have provided in the forms page load event and it is having no effect on the fade out animation effects that I am seeing in both the multi-column combo box or the date time picker.

I went into the Element Hierarchy Editor at design time and found the multi-column combobox "RadMultiColumnComboBoxElement" and saw that the DropDownAnimationEnabled value is actually defaulted to false.  Based on this I would think that the animations would not be occuring at all by default.

I did a little more digging thru the control's properties in the Editor and I found a group called 'MultiColumnPopupForm' in the Misc tab.  In that group I found three properties which I think may be the root cause of this issue for the multi-column combo box.  They are FadeAnimationFrames, FadeAnimationSpeed and FadeAnimationType.  What caught my eye is that the FadeAnimationType is 'FadeOut'  which is the exact animation effect that is causing this problem.  I did some experimenting and the animation fade out effect is the same for the multi-column combo box regardless of how many frames I specify or what speed i set it to.  Can you please look into this and let me know if there is a bug in the code or there is something else I need to do to disable this fade out animation?

Thanks!

[Bryan Farrell]

Hi Jack,

I wanted to give you an update as I was able to come up with a fix for this issue.  Below is the code that actually disabled the Fade Animations:

For the Multi-Column Combo Box:

radMultiColumnComboBox1.MultiColumnComboBoxElement.MultiColumnPopupForm.FadeAnimationType = FadeAnimationType.None;

For the Date Time Picker:

RadDateTimePickerCalendar calendarBehavior = radDateTimePicker1.DateTimePickerElement.GetCurrentBehavior() as RadDateTimePickerCalendar;
calendarBehavior.PopupControl.FadeAnimationType = FadeAnimationType.None;

I wanted to thank you for getting me pointed in the right direction so I was able to figure out this issue.  That being said there are a few things I have noticed during this process.

First, I set these properties in the Element Hierarchy Editor at design time and there was no effect when I compiled and ran the code.  That seems to be a serious bug with these controls because if I set these properties at design time using your Element Hierarchy Editor that should be the same as adding the code to the page load event.  This was not the case and added to the confusion of the issue.

Second,  you guys should really revisit how you handle the animations in these controls.  At first I was told to use "ThemeResolutionService.AllowAnimations = false" to disable all control animations but then was told that it would not effect the popup menu's in the controls.  The setting to disable those animations as you instructed then did not work as I was told it would.  I had to then look further into your control logic to find the FadeAnimationType property and figure out that it needed to be set to None in page load code for the animations to finally be turned off.

All of these issues with the Animations seems to be more complicated and confusing for the end user than it needs to and as a result all of us needed to take extra time to figure these issues out.  If "ThemeResolutionService.AllowAnimations = false" actually overrided all other animation settings in the controls then that would be a much better solution.

So far overall I like the Telerik controls but I hope you consider something along this line so others don't have as much trouble as I did in the future.

Thanks

[Jack]

Hello Joe,

Thank you for your feedback and for the reported issues. I confirm the described behavior and we will address the issue with the animation properties in our upcoming service pack. Regarding the element hierarchy editor, we need some additional time for research and I cannot give a time frame when this issue will be addressed. I also updated Telerik points accordingly. Thank you again for sharing your solution with the community.

Should you have any other questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

Best wishes, Jack
the Telerik team