Hi,

I am using Resources dictionaries to customize my controls and apply them as themes to my WPF application so I have implemented one for the button control.

A code snippet for my custom Button.xaml is (its namespace is MyWPFApp.Themes):

<ResourceDictionary ...>

    ...

    <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="NormalBackground" 
                        EndPoint="0,1" StartPoint="0,0">        
      <GradientStop Color="sc#1.000000, 0.250141, 0.333404, 0.884413" Offset="0"/>
      <GradientStop Color="#ccffffff" Offset="1"/>
    </LinearGradientBrush>

<LinearGradientBrush x:Key="OverBackground" EndPoint="0,1" StartPoint="0,0">
    <GradientStop Color="#da5e69" Offset="0"/>
    <GradientStop Color="#d12e27" Offset="1"/>
</LinearGradientBrush>

<LinearGradientBrush x:Key="ClickBackground" EndPoint="0,1" StartPoint="0,0">
    <GradientStop Color="#d22828" Offset="1"/>
    <GradientStop Color="#b00000" Offset="0"/>
</LinearGradientBrush>

    ...

<Style TargetType="{x:Type Button}">
            ...
    <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource NormalBackground}"/>
            ...
    </Style>
</ResourceDictionary>

and I apply it by doing the following from my main Application.xaml:

     <Application ...>
          <Application.Resources>
               <ResourceDictionary>
                   <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
                        <ResourceDictionary Source="Themes/Button.xaml"/>
                   </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
               </ResourceDictionary>

          </Application.Resources>
     </Application>

What I try to do is to change background color, for example, from White to Lime for 6 seconds by doing this from one of my pages, MyPage1.xaml, using StoryBoard:

<Page x:Class="MyWPFApp.Pages.MyPage1" ...>
 <Page.Resources>
    ...
    <Storyboard x:Key="sbBtnResetHC" Storyboard.TargetName="BtnResetHC"
        Storyboard.TargetProperty="(Background).
        (SolidColorBrush.Color)">
        <ColorAnimation From="Pink"
                          To="Green"
                          By="Blue"
                          Duration="0:0:6"
                          RepeatBehavior="3x"
                          AutoReverse="True" />
    </Storyboard>
    ...
    </Page.Resources>
    ...
    <Button x:Name="BtnResetHC"    
            Click="BtnResetHC_Click"
            Width="90" Visibility="Collapsed" />
    ...
 </Page>

and from code behind MyPage1.xaml.cs I start animation by doing this:

                Storyboard sb = (Storyboard)FindResource("sbBtnResetHC");
                sb.Begin();

when the button is visible, but it doesn't work for me.

Any ideas what's wrong?

Maybe another possibility, as I want the animation starts on button visible is to do a trigger for the button over Visibility property, Is it a better solution?

Thanks a lot!