Easiest way to animate background image sliding left?

Question

What's the best way to animate a background image sliding to the left, and looping it? Say I've got a progress bar with a background I want to animate when it's active (like in Gnome or OS X).

I've been playing with the $(...).animate() function and trying to modify the relevant CSS property, but I keep hitting a brick wall when trying to figure out how to modify the background-position property. I can't just increment its value, and I'm not sure if this is even the best approach.

Any help appreciated!

Answer 1

As soon as I posted this I figured it out. In case it helps anyone else, here's the function I came up with:

function animateBar(self) {
    // Setup
    var bar = self.element.find('.ui-progress-bar');

    bar.css('background-position', '0px 0px');

    bar.animate({
        backgroundPosition: '-20px 0px'
    }, 1000, 'linear', function() {
        animateBar(self);
    });
}

Answer 2

Just a suggestion, but rather than using a standard function and passing in the element as an argument, it would be better to use fn.extend.

$.fn.extend({
    animateBar: function(){
       $(this).find('.ui-progress-bar').css('background-position', '0px 0px');
       $(this).find('.ui-progress-bar').animate({
            backgroundPosition: '-20px 0px'
       }, 1000, 'linear', function() {
            animateBar(self);
       });
    }
});

Then you would call the function like this:

$(this).animateBar(); 

vs

 animateBar( $(this) );

Just my 2 cents. However @Markus 's Gif solutions is definitely superior, unless you have a specific reason to use an image animated by jQuery. Also your solution will not loop on its own.

Answer 3

I'd say a better solution in your case (animating a progress bar) is to use an animated .gif as the progress bar's background-image.

Also, to switch from a static progress bar to an animated one, just use something like:

$("#progress").css("background-image", "progress.gif");

Answer 4

You can use the Spritely plugin , and for your case of animating a sliding background and repeating it, you can use the pan() method which makes the background image pan continually to the left or right and then repeat.