fading a paragraph in word by word using jquery?

Question

    <p class="example">i want to split this paragraph into 
words and fade them in one by one</p>

the jquery/js:

$(document).ready(function() {

    var $txt = $(".example")
       ,$words = $txt.text()
       ,$splitWords = $words.split(" ");

    $txt.hide();

    for(i = 0; i < $splitWords.length; i++){
     // i want fade in each $splitWords[i]
     //$splitWords[i].fadeIn(....  - i tried this doesnt work

   }
  });

im trying to split the paragraph into words, and fade them in one by one, thier might be an easier way to do this without splitting the words, please shed some light on this. thanks

Answer 1

Text by itself can't have an opacity, therefore you must wrap the text with an element that can have opacity (such as a span). You can then fade in those spans.

Try this:

http://jsfiddle.net/6czap/

var $el = $(".example:first"), text = $el.text(),
    words = text.split(" "), html = "";

for (var i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
    html += "<span>" + words[i] + " </span>";
}

$el.html(html).children().hide().each(function(i){
  $(this).delay(i*500).fadeIn(700);
});

Update for benekastah: http://jsfiddle.net/6czap/3/

var $el = $(".example:first"), text = $.trim($el.text()),
    words = text.split(" "), html = "";

for (var i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
    html += "<span>" + words[i] + ((i+1) === words.length ? "" : " ") + "</span>";
};
$el.html(html).children().hide().each(function(i){
  $(this).delay(i*200).fadeIn(700);
});
$el.find("span").promise().done(function(){
    $el.text(function(i, text){
       return $.trim(text);
    });            
});