Linear motion with XAML and Storyboard animations!

One of the remarkably cool things with XAML is how easy it is to set up animations.  Most of the time I just need to animate some opacity.  A quick web search, and boom!  I’m in business.
But for some reason, animating motion (like: move my text box off screen) is a pain.  Here are the important steps.

1. Give your object an x:Name (“obj”).  Let’s also assume that the object is a custom object of type local:JokeControl.  The word local refers to a XML namespace definition.
2. Add a RenderTransform with a TranslateTransform child to your object
3. Add in a storyboard and give it an x:Naem
4. Set the storyboard’s TargetName to the object name
5. Set the storyboard’s TargetProperty using the weird ‘path’ syntax: (local:JokeControl.RenderTransform).(TranslateTransform.X)

And then in code, just call “.Begin()” on the animation!
Here are the actual bits of code:
From the XAML file:

Notes	Code
Set up the ‘local’ namespace so that my user control (which is in C# namespace ‘Jokes’) can be used.	xmlns:local="using:Jokes"
Create the animation in the resource section.  The storyboard (animation) is named uiAnimateJokeOut, and actually has more bits than this.	<Grid.Resources>     <Storyboard x:Name="uiAnimateJokeOut" >         <DoubleAnimation             Storyboard.TargetName="uiJokeControl"             Storyboard.TargetProperty="(local:JokeControl.RenderTransform).(TranslateTransform.X)"             From="0.0" To="400.0" Duration="0:0:0.5"             AutoReverse="False"                          />
The object I want to animate needs a RenderTransform; the particular render transform I need is a Translate transform.  I don’t have to name it because I’ll find it by type.	<local:JokeControl x:Name="uiJokeControl" Grid.Column="1" >     <local:JokeControl.RenderTransform>         <TranslateTransform X="0" >         </TranslateTransform>     </local:JokeControl.RenderTransform> </local:JokeControl>
C# code to start the animation	uiAnimateJokeOut.Begin();

While I’m at it – I wanted the joke control to move right to go off screen, and then come back.  And I wanted to change the joke when it’s off the screen.  I did this by making two animations (one for joke OUT and one for joke IN).  I then added a .Completed on the OUT to swap jokes and to bring the joke back in.
The code looks like this:
uiAnimateJokeOut.Completed += (s, args) => { DoRandom(); uiAnimateJokeIn.Begin(); };