Animation Groups

[matthewmatician@…]

A best-practice in using javascript to animate transitions is to remember to "Stop" other animations in progress that would cause undesirable outcomes (e.g., if a user hovers their mouse quickly over many buttons, back & forth, we sometimes see these buttons flash on & off repeatedly). One way to automate this is to categorize elements into groups, and define characteristics to the group. For example, we could define a group as "onlyOneActive", meaning that all other animations in progress must stop and go back to their inactive state. Another example would be to define a group as "skipToState", meaning that all other animations must skip ahead to the state to wich they are currently transitioning.

[jitter]

Updated description and removed superseded comments

[muley]

I made an animation groups plugin some time ago as a proof of concept... it's a rough draft, but may be of use:  http://adam.cirkuit.net/animationGroups

[lrbabe]

Can't you just use jQuery.fn.stop to that purpose?  http://api.jquery.com/stop

I think this tutorial will help you to achieve what you are describing.  http://www.learningjquery.com/2009/01/quick-tip-prevent-animation-queue-buildup

[matthewmatician@…]

Replying to lrbabe:

Can't you just use jQuery.fn.stop to that purpose?  http://api.jquery.com/stop

I think this tutorial will help you to achieve what you are describing.  http://www.learningjquery.com/2009/01/quick-tip-prevent-animation-queue-buildup

I'm actually suggesting a more streamlined approach than the "stop" function. Often in an interface you need to call several "stops" to different elements before proceeding. It's often not a big deal to manage 5 or 6 cooperative elements, but if you need to manage any more than this, your code becomes lengthy and repetitive.

[john]

This definitely seems like something that should be proved as a plugin first before we start to implement this in core.