jQuery “blinking highlight” effect on div?

Answer 1

I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for so wrote something as basic as I could make it. The highlighted class could just be a background color.

var blinking = false; // global scope

function start_blinking() {
    blinking = true;
    blink();
}

function stop_blinking() {
    blinking = false;
}

function blink(x=0) {
    $("#element").removeClass("highlighted"); // default to not highlighted to account for the extra iteration after stopping

    if (blinking) {
        if (x%2 == 0) $("#element").addClass("highlighted"); // highlight on even numbers of x
        setTimeout(function(){blink(++x)},500); // increment x and recurse
    }
}