How to Properly Use jQuery Animation Callbacks

Learn how to handle jQuery animations and callbacks effectively to ensure animations complete before executing subsequent code in your web projects.
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How to Properly Use jQuery Animation Callbacks: A Beginner's Guide

As a newcomer to jQuery, you may find yourself grappling with how to manage animations and their respective callbacks effectively. One common challenge beginners face is ensuring that actions occur only after an animation has fully completed. This guide will tackle one such issue involving jQuery's animate function, specifically regarding callbacks like done.

The Problem

You may encounter a situation like this: you create an animation that moves an element to a new position, but immediately after the animation starts, you want to change the CSS properties of that element (for example, changing its position). However, you notice that the changes occur before the animation completes, leading to unexpected behavior.

Here’s a condensed version of the issue:

You want to animate an element’s position.

You want to change the CSS property to position: static only after the animation is finished.

Your current implementation causes the CSS change to execute before the animation is complete.

Example Code

Let’s look at an initial implementation that might not work as intended:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

In the above code, the done function executes immediately, causing position to change prematurely.

A Solution That Works

To ensure that CSS changes only occur after the animation runs to completion, we can use the promise method along with done. Below is an improved implementation that achieves the desired effect:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Breakdown of the Solution

Setup Initial CSS: We first set the position of the element to absolute to facilitate movement.

Animating on Click: When the target element is clicked, it starts animating to a new position.

Using .promise().done():

The promise() method returns a promise that resolves when the animation completes.

The done() method is chained to execute the desired CSS change only after the animation has finished.

Final CSS Change: Inside the done() function, we call $(this).css("position", "static"), which correctly updates the element's CSS after the animation completes.

Conclusion

By utilizing jQuery's animation and promise capabilities smartly, you can ensure that your animations behave as expected, and subsequent code executes at the right time. This pattern is particularly useful when creating dynamic, interactive elements on your web pages, enhancing both the functional and visual aspects of your applications.

Now that you've learned how to effectively manage jQuery animations and their callbacks, you can confidently incorporate these techniques into your projects. Happy coding!