Aynchronous Color Fading

Introduction

This is a simple class with a shared method for asynchronously fading a color property from one color to another. I needed a way to indicate to users that they had saved or deleted something, so I wanted a way to slowly fade the background color of a textbox.

Code Usage

There are three overloads of the shared method. The basic method takes seven parameters:

container - The object that contains the color property to be fading. For example, a text box or label.
colorProperty - The name of the color property to change - this has to be a string, for example, "ForeColor" or "BackColor".
startColor - The color that will begin the fade.
endColor - The color that will end the the fade.
steps - The number of steps to take in fading from the start color to the end color.
delay - A delay in milliseconds between each step in the fade.
callback - An optional function that will be called when the fade completes.

The second overload takes an intermediate color and the number of steps for fading, and the final overload takes a list of colors and steps.

Problem

I wanted to simply pass the color property itself, and pass it byRef so that I could change it, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I don't know if you can pass a byRef parameter to another thread. Anyway, that's why the method requires a container object and the name of the property to change.

Examples

Dim textBox1 As New TextBox() 
Visual.FadeColor(textBox1, "BackColor", Color.Green, Color.White, _
                 25, 25, AddressOf DoneFading)

Private Sub DoneFading(ByVal container As Object, ByVal colorProperty As String)
    MsgBox("Done fading!")
End Sub