Question

I’m trying to create a simple animation in which the background-color slides into place. So far it’s successful, but there’s one major issue: the text on the block moves and I can’t figure out how to stop it.

I could position the text above, but I need to change the color as well and if I do that in jQuery it creates a mess.

The CSS:

.button {
    display: block;
    width: 130px;
    height: 40px;
    cursor: pointer;
    position: fixed;
    z-index: 1;
    top: 15px;
    left: 15px;
    text-align: center;
    color: #FFF;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-decoration: none;
    font-size: 23px;
    text-transform: lowercase;
    font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
    background: #FFF
} .button:hover { color: #FFF }
.button h1 {
    display: inline-block;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    width: 130px;
    height: 40px;
    font-size: 23px;
    margin: 0;
    background-color: blue
}
.button h1.back {
    z-index: 999;
    color: #000;
    margin-left: -130px;
    overflow: hidden;
    background-color: red
}
.button h1 span {
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    top: 10%;
    width: 130px;
    height: 40px;
    text-align: center
}

Then the jQuery:

$('.button').hover(function() {
    var el = $(this);
    el.children('.back').animate({
        marginLeft: '0'
    }, 30, 'swing');
}, function() {
    var el = $(this);
    el.children('.back').animate({
        marginLeft: '-130px'
    }, 30, 'swing');
});

It creates a great animation. But the text, it slides with it. How can I prevent this without glitchy colour changes?

Here is the jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/WERFJ/

Answer 1

Two things:

1. http://jsfiddle.net/WERFJ/13/ It might need a little tweaking but that’s the effect you were after. Basically I just took the text out of the h1’s and put a z-index on it so it’s always in front, then used .button:hover span { color: #000 }

2. Using h1’s to do this isn’t a proper use of h1. I would just use regular div’s.