Question

i want to animate a string of text taken from an html element using jquery:

<h1>Animate</h1>

for the jquery part:

$(document).ready(function() {

$( "h1" ).animate({ fontSize: "90px" }, 1500 )
     .animate({ fontSize: "50px" }, 1500 );

});

this animates the whole h1 text value, however i want to animate each character in the h1 text.

the second jquery part:

$(document).ready(function () {

    var animateChar = $("h1").text();
    for(i=0; i<animateChar.length; i++) {

        //alert(i + ': ' + animateChar.charAt(i));
        // for every animateChar.charAt[i] want to run this
        //jquery animation.
        //$( "h1" ).animate({ fontSize: "90px" }, 1500 )
        //.animate({ fontSize: "50px" }, 1500 );

        }
 });

this is the bit where im stuck. thanks

Answer 1

You can use jQuery functions on DOM elements. Not on characters apart. You should use different DOM elements for each character:

<span>A</span><span>N</span><span>I</span>...

with something like this must do the trick

$('span').each(function() {
    var that = $(this);
    setTimeout(function() { 
        that.animate({ fontSize: "90px" }, 1500 )
            .animate({ fontSize: "50px" }, 1500 );
    },that.index()*100);
});​

-edit-

working jSFIDDLE

-edit 2-

without messy HTML JSFIDDLE(well it’s still messy, but javascript makes it messy 😉 )