Animating the background color of an element is a great way to draw our users' eyes to the object we want them to see. Another use for animating the background color of an element is to show that something has happened to the element. It's typically used in this way if the state of the object changes (added, moved, deleted, and so on), or if it requires attention to fix a problem. We'll learn about some of these things in the next two chapters.
Note
Due to the lack of support in jQuery 2.0 for animating background-color, we'll be using jQuery UI to give us the functionality we need to create this effect.
We'll be covering all of the beautiful things jQuery UI gives us the ability to do in Chapter 6, Extending Animations with jQuery UI.