Book Image

Learning jQuery, Third Edition

Book Image

Learning jQuery, Third Edition

Overview of this book

To build interesting, interactive sites, developers are turning to JavaScript libraries such as jQuery to automate common tasks and simplify complicated ones. Because many web developers have more experience with HTML and CSS than with JavaScript, the library's design lends itself to a quick start for designers with little programming experience. Experienced programmers will also be aided by its conceptual consistency.Learning jQuery Third Edition is revised and updated for version 1.6 of jQuery. You will learn the basics of jQuery for adding interactions and animations to your pages. Even if previous attempts at writing JavaScript have left you baffled, this book will guide you past the pitfalls associated with AJAX, events, effects, and advanced JavaScript language features.Starting with an introduction to jQuery, you will first be shown how to write a functioning jQuery program in just three lines of code. Learn how to add impact to your actions through a set of simple visual effects and to create, copy, reassemble, and embellish content using jQuery's DOM modification methods. The book will step you through many detailed, real-world examples, and even equip you to extend the jQuery library itself with your own plug-ins.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Learning jQuery Third Edition
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating custom animations


In addition to the pre-built effect methods, jQuery provides a powerful .animate() method that allows us to create our own custom animations with fine-grained control. The .animate() method comes in two forms. The first takes up to four arguments, which are as follows:

  1. A map of style properties and values—similar to the .css() map discussed earlier in this chapter

  2. An optional speed—which can be one of the preset strings or a number of milliseconds

  3. An optional easing type—an advanced option discussed in Chapter 11, Advanced Effects

  4. An optional callback function—which will be discussed later in this chapter

All together, the four arguments look similar to the following code snippet:

.animate({property1: 'value1', property2: 'value2'}, 
  speed, easing, function() {
    alert('The animation is finished.');
  }
);

The second form takes two arguments: a map of properties and a map of options:

.animate({properties}, {options})

In effect, the second argument wraps up the second...