Storyboards

A Storyboard is a container Timeline that groups one or more child animations (DoubleAnimation, ColorAnimation, and so on) and coordinates when each one starts relative to the Storyboard's own timeline, letting you choreograph a complex sequence — like a card flipping while fading and growing simultaneously — as a single unit. Each child animation is targeted at a specific element and property using the attached properties Storyboard.TargetName (or Storyboard.Target for code-set targets) and Storyboard.TargetProperty, with the latter using a PropertyPath syntax such as "(UIElement.RenderTransform).(ScaleTransform.ScaleX)" to reach into nested transform objects.

The most common declarative trigger is an EventTrigger wrapping a BeginStoryboard, commonly attached to a control's Loaded event or a Button's Click event, which starts the Storyboard automatically when that routed event fires. From code-behind, a named Storyboard resource can be started imperatively with storyboard.Begin(this) after retrieving it via FindResource or TryFindResource, and this same code path supports Pause(), Resume(), Stop(), and Seek() for full playback control — useful for scenarios like a pausable progress indicator. Style- and ControlTemplate-based Triggers, and the newer VisualStateManager pattern used heavily in custom controls, are the two other major places Storyboards are declared and fired.

Each child Timeline inside a Storyboard can specify its own BeginTime as a TimeSpan offset, which lets you sequence effects — for example a fade-in that finishes before a slide-in begins two-tenths of a second later — purely declaratively without code-behind delays or nested storyboards. When a Storyboard targets multiple elements, RepeatBehavior can be set per-child ("Forever" for a looping pulse, or a fixed count) or on the Storyboard as a whole, and AutoReverse causes the animation to play backward to its starting value after reaching its target, commonly combined with RepeatBehavior="Forever" to build a breathing or pulsing highlight effect.