Book Image

jQuery 2.0 Animation Techniques: Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

Book Image

jQuery 2.0 Animation Techniques: Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

Overview of this book

jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML, and is the most popular JavaScript library in use today. Using the features offered by jQuery, developers are able to create dynamic web pages. jQuery empowers you with creating simple as well as complex animations. jQuery 2.0 Animation Techniques Beginner's Guide will teach you to understand animation in jQuery to produce slick and attractive interfaces that respond to your visitors' interactions. You will learn everything you need to know about creating engaging and effective web page animations using jQuery. In jQuery 2.0 Animation Techniques Beginner's Guide, each chapter starts with simple concepts that enable you to build, style, and code your way into creating beautifully engaging and interactive user interfaces. With the use of wide range of examples, this book will teach you how to create a range of animations, from subtle UI effects (such as form validation animation and image resizing) to completely custom plugins (such as image slideshows and parallax background animations). The book provides various examples that gradually build up your knowledge and practical experience in using the jQuery API to create stunning animations. The book uses many examples and explains how to create animations using an easy and step-by-step approach.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
jQuery 2.0 Animation Techniques Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Time for action – animating the background position


Now, for the <script> itself. At the bottom of the HTML file, as usual in the empty anonymous function, add the following code:

var bg = $("#background");
var mg = $("#midground");
var fg = $("#foreground");

$(document).keydown(function(e) {
  if (e.which === 39) { //right arrow key
    bg.animate({ backgroundPosition: "-=1px" }, 0, "linear" );
    mg.animate({ backgroundPosition: "-=10px" }, 0, "linear" );
    fg.animate({ backgroundPosition: "-=20px" }, 0, "linear" );
  }
});

If we run this page in a browser now, we should find that as we hold down the right arrow key, the different background image slices move at relatively slower speeds with the foreground almost rushing past and the background moving leisurely along.

What just happened?

In the script we first cache the selectors we'll be using so that we don't have to create a new jQuery object and select the elements from the DOM each time the background-position changes, which...