Making a splash screen

Question

The concept of a splash screen doesn\'t strike me as something that should be so complicated, but I\'m having trouble getting the whole splash screen painted.

Let\'s

Answer 1

Why not when you run the app open a form which loads whatever you need to load into a class, then when it's done loading, open your main form and send the class into it? Alternatively you can use a singleton to load everything.

In your Program.cs:

    [STAThread]
    static void Main()
    {
        Application.EnableVisualStyles();
        Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
        Application.Run(new SplashScreen());
    }

Then in SplashScreen:

    public SplashScreen()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        LoadEverything();
        this.Visible = false;
        MainForm mainForm = new MainForm(LoadedClass);
        mainForm.ShowDialog();
        this.Close();
    }

I need to update this:

Here's working code (the above is just the concept).

    public SplashScreen()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        _currentDispatcher = Dispatcher.CurrentDispatcher;

        // This is just for the example - start a background method here to call
        // the LoadMainForm rather than the timer elapsed
        System.Timers.Timer loadTimer = new System.Timers.Timer(2000);
        loadTimer.Elapsed += LoadTimerElapsed;
        loadTimer.Start();
    }

    public void LoadMainForm()
    {
        // Do your loading here
        MainForm mainForm = new MainForm();

        Visible = false;
        mainForm.ShowDialog();
        System.Timers.Timer closeTimer = new System.Timers.Timer(200);
        closeTimer.Elapsed += CloseTimerElapsed;

        closeTimer.Start();
    }

    private Dispatcher _currentDispatcher;

    private void CloseTimerElapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        if (sender is System.Timers.Timer && sender != null)
        {
            (sender as System.Timers.Timer).Stop();
            (sender as System.Timers.Timer).Dispose();
        }
        _currentDispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Action(() => Close()));
    }

    private void LoadTimerElapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        if (sender is System.Timers.Timer && sender != null)
        {
            (sender as System.Timers.Timer).Stop();
            (sender as System.Timers.Timer).Dispose();
        }
        _currentDispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Action(() => LoadMainForm()));
    }