How do I get an animated gif to work in WPF?

Question

What control type should I use - Image, MediaElement, etc.?

Answer 1

I, too, did a search and found several different solution in just a thread on the old MSDN forums. (link no longer worked so I removed it)

The simplest to execute seems to be to use a WinForms PictureBox control, and went like this (changed a few things from the thread, most of it the same).

Add a reference to System.Windows.Forms, WindowsFormsIntegration, and System.Drawing to your project first.

Then in the Window_Loaded handler, you would set the pictureBoxLoading.ImageLocation property to the image file path that you want to show.

private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    pictureBoxLoading.ImageLocation = "../Images/mygif.gif";
}

The MediaElement control was mentioned in that thread, but it is also mentioned that it is a rather heavy control, so there were a number of alternatives, including at least 2 homebrewed controls based on the Image control, so this is the simplest.