Correct way to animate box-shadow with jQuery

Question

Which is the correct syntax to animate the box-shadow property with jQuery?

$().animate({?:"0 0 5px #666"}); 

Answer 1

Direct answer

Using Edwin Martin's jQuery plugin for shadow animation, which extends the .animate method, you can simply use the normal syntax with "boxShadow" and every facet of that - color, the x- and y-offset, the blur-radius and spread-radius - gets animated. It includes multiple shadow support.

$(element).animate({    boxShadow: "0px 0px 5px 3px hsla(100, 70%, 60%, 0.8)" });  

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Using CSS animations instead

jQuery animates by changing the style property of DOM elements, which can cause surprises with specificity and moves style information out of your stylesheets.

I can't find browser support stats for CSS shadow animation, but you might consider using jQuery to apply an animation-based class instead of handling the animation directly. For example, you can define a box-shadow animation in your stylesheet:

@keyframes shadowPulse {     0% {         box-shadow: 0px 0px 10px 0px hsla(0, 0%, 0%, 1);     }      100% {         box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px 0px hsla(0, 0%, 0%, 0);     } }  .shadow-pulse {     animation-name: shadowPulse;     animation-duration: 1.5s;     animation-iteration-count: 1;     animation-timing-function: linear; } 

You can then use the native animationend event to synchronise the end of the animation with what you were doing in your JS code:

$(element).addClass('shadow-pulse'); $(element).on('animationend', function(){         $(element).removeClass('shadow-pulse');     // do something else... });