[c#] How do you show animated GIFs on a Windows Form (c#)

I have a form showing progress messages as a fairly long process runs. It's a call to a web service so I can't really show a percentage complete figure on a progress bar meaningfully. (I don't particularly like the Marquee property of the progress bar)

I would like to show an animated GIF to give the process the feel of some activity (e.g. files flying from one computer to another like Windows copy process).

How do you do this?

Note that in Windows, you traditionally don't use animated Gifs, but little AVI animations: there is a Windows native control just to display them. There are even tools to convert animated Gifs to AVI (and vice-versa).

Public Class Form1

    Private animatedimage As New Bitmap("C:\MyData\Search.gif")
    Private currentlyanimating As Boolean = False

    Private Sub OnFrameChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)

        Me.Invalidate()

    End Sub

    Private Sub AnimateImage()

        If currentlyanimating = True Then
            ImageAnimator.Animate(animatedimage, AddressOf Me.OnFrameChanged)
            currentlyanimating = False
        End If

    End Sub

    Protected Overrides Sub OnPaint(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs)

        AnimateImage()
        ImageAnimator.UpdateFrames(animatedimage)
        e.Graphics.DrawImage(animatedimage, New Point((Me.Width / 4) + 40, (Me.Height / 4) + 40))

    End Sub

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

        BtnStop.Enabled = False

    End Sub

    Private Sub BtnStop_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles BtnStop.Click

        currentlyanimating = False
        ImageAnimator.StopAnimate(animatedimage, AddressOf Me.OnFrameChanged)
        BtnStart.Enabled = True
        BtnStop.Enabled = False

    End Sub

    Private Sub BtnStart_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles BtnStart.Click

        currentlyanimating = True
        AnimateImage()
        BtnStart.Enabled = False
        BtnStop.Enabled = True

    End Sub

End Class

If you put it in a PictureBox control, it should just work

It doesn't when you start a long operation behind, because everything STOPS since you'Re in the same thread.

I had the same issue and came across different solutions by implementing which I used to face several different issues. Finally, below is what I put some pieces from different posts together which worked for me as expected.

private void btnCompare_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ThreadStart threadStart = new ThreadStart(Execution);
    Thread thread = new Thread(threadStart);
    thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
    thread.Start();
}

Here is the Execution method that also carries invoking the PictureBox control:

private void Execution()
{
    btnCompare.Invoke((MethodInvoker)delegate { pictureBox1.Visible = true; });
    Application.DoEvents();

    // Your main code comes here . . .

    btnCompare.Invoke((MethodInvoker)delegate { pictureBox1.Visible = false; });
}

Keep in mind, the PictureBox is invisible from Properties Window or do below:

private void ComparerForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    pictureBox1.Visible = false;
}

I had the same problem. Whole form (including gif) stopping to redraw itself because of long operation working in the background. Here is how i solved this.

  private void MyThreadRoutine()
  {
   this.Invoke(this.ShowProgressGifDelegate);
   //your long running process
   System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000);
   this.Invoke(this.HideProgressGifDelegate);
  }

  private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
   ThreadStart myThreadStart = new ThreadStart(MyThreadRoutine);
   Thread myThread = new Thread(myThreadStart);
   myThread.Start(); 
  }

I simply created another thread to be responsible for this operation. Thanks to this initial form continues redrawing without problems (including my gif working). ShowProgressGifDelegate and HideProgressGifDelegate are delegates in form that set visible property of pictureBox with gif to true/false.