How to update a progress bar so it increases smoothly?

Question

I\'m using progress bar of WPF (C#) to describe the process\'s progress.

My algorithm is below:

DoSomethingCode1();
ProgressBar.SetPercent(10); // 10         


        

Answer 1

You could call the BeginAnimation method to animate the ProgressBar's Value property. In my example below, I used a DoubleAnimation.

I created an extension method that takes in the desired percentage:

public static class ProgressBarExtensions
{
    private static TimeSpan duration = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2);

    public static void SetPercent(this ProgressBar progressBar, double percentage)
    {
        DoubleAnimation animation = new DoubleAnimation(percentage, duration);
        progressBar.BeginAnimation(ProgressBar.ValueProperty, animation);          
    }
}

So in your code you could simply call:

myProgressBar.SetPercent(50);

Doing this simply smooths out the transition so it looks nicer. To quote another answer: "The idea is that a progress bar reports actual progress - not time elapsed. It's not intended to be an animation that just indicates something is happening." However, the default style of the progress bar does have a pulsating effect which can imply work is happening.