Scott,

A timer going off every 500 milliseconds isn't going to adversely affect your performance. The tmr.Timer() event can either toggle the .Visible property of the current shape or alter it's FillColor.

> I can't just use a timer, unfortunately. I'm attempting to create, in essence, an animated thermometer bar using shapes (circles, specifically) to represent the landmarks in the therm's process. So, this thermbar will:
>
>1) begin with 10 (or 20 or whatever) small red circles
>2) fill items with green as that step is completed
>3) show the current step as a flashing yellow
>
> Since this thermbar will only be updated periodically, I can't spare the clock cycles to update it twice every second or so. This is why I'm looking for a property that can be set or manipulated to emulate blinking.
>
> Worst case, I'll make the current step a static yellow, but a blinking yellow would be much more dynamic and meaningful: it would clearly indicate that the system is doing something, not, as Alan Cooper says, "going stupid". :)