BBC BASIC Programmers' Reference

by Richard Russell, November 2009

A typical example of an animation control is the familiar 'search' animation:



To create an animation control in your main window use code similar to the following:

        INSTALL @lib$+"WINLIB5A"
 
        ACM_OPEN = &464
        ACM_PLAY = &465
        WS_BORDER = &800000
 
        hwndAnim% = FN_createwindow(@hwnd%, "SysAnimate32", "", 100, 100, \
        \                           0, 0, 0, WS_BORDER, 0)
 
        SYS "SendMessage", hwndAnim%, ACM_OPEN, 0, "C:\windows\search.avi"
        SYS "SendMessage", hwndAnim%, ACM_PLAY, -1, &FFFF0000

Note: the file search.avi probably won't be at that location on your PC.

To create an animation control in a dialogue box use code similar to the following:

        INSTALL @lib$+"WINLIB2"
 
        ACM_OPEN = &464
        ACM_PLAY = &465
        WS_VISIBLE = &10000000
        IDC_ANIMATE = 1000
 
        dlg% = FN_newdialog("Animation", 200, 100, 74, 50, 8, 1000)
        PROC_dlgctrl(dlg%, "", IDC_ANIMATE, 10, 10, 0, 0, WS_VISIBLE, "SysAnimate32")
        PROC_showdialog(dlg%)
 
        SYS "SendDlgItemMessage", !dlg%, IDC_ANIMATE, ACM_OPEN, 0, "C:\windows\search.avi"
        SYS "SendDlgItemMessage", !dlg%, IDC_ANIMATE, ACM_PLAY, -1, &FFFF0000

Be aware of the caveat in the relevant MSDN page: “An animation control can display an AVI clip originating from either an uncompressed AVI file or from an AVI file that was compressed using run-length (BI_RLE8) encoding. The AVI file must not have a sound channel. The capabilities of the animation control are very limited and are subject to change”.