Animate the clip: rect property?

Question

I want to animate the css property clip: rect with jQuery's .animate() but can't find if this is possible anywhere. Have tried:

$(".img1").animate({ clip: "rect(1px, 945px, 499px, 1px)"
},300);

without any luck. Does anyone know?

Thanks

Answer 1

Anything is possible, but there probably are easier ways to do what you want without using clip, but if you use jQuery animate's fx.step function, you can animate anything, but you need to do some calculations to figure out values and stuff, but it goes something like this:

$(".img1").animate({
  fontSize: 100 //some unimportant CSS to animate so we get some values
},
{
  step: function(now, fx) { //now is the animated value from initial css value
      $(this).css('clip', 'rect(0px, '+now+'px, '+now+'px, 0px)')
  }
}, 10000);

FIDDLE

Answer 2

Since this is a popular question and was the top of Google search results when I looked for this today, here is a jQuery plugin that works with the clip: property and .animate() natively.

Credit: http://zduck.com/2013/jquery-css-clip-animation-plugin/

/*
* jquery.animate.clip.js
*
* jQuery css clip animation support -- Joshua Poehls
* version 0.1.4

* forked from Jim Palmer's plugin http://www.overset.com/2008/08/07/jquery-css-clip-animation-plugin/
* idea spawned from jquery.color.js by John Resig
* Released under the MIT license.
*/
(function (jQuery) {

    function getStyle(elem, name) {
        return (elem.currentStyle && elem.currentStyle[name]) || elem.style[name];
    }

    function getClip(elem) {
        var cssClip = $(elem).css('clip') || '';

        if (!cssClip) {
            // Try to get the clip rect another way for IE8.
            // This is a workaround for jQuery's css('clip') returning undefined
            // when the clip is defined in an external stylesheet in IE8. -JPOEHLS
            var pieces = {
                top: getStyle(elem, 'clipTop'),
                right: getStyle(elem, 'clipRight'),
                bottom: getStyle(elem, 'clipBottom'),
                left: getStyle(elem, 'clipLeft')
            };

            if (pieces.top && pieces.right && pieces.bottom && pieces.left) {
                cssClip = 'rect(' + pieces.top + ' ' + pieces.right + ' ' + pieces.bottom + ' ' + pieces.left + ')';
            }
        }

        // Strip commas and return.
        return cssClip.replace(/,/g, ' ');
    }

    jQuery.fx.step.clip = function (fx) {
        if (fx.pos === 0) {
            var cRE = /rect\(([0-9\.]{1,})(px|em)[,]?\s+([0-9\.]{1,})(px|em)[,]?\s+([0-9\.]{1,})(px|em)[,]?\s+([0-9\.]{1,})(px|em)\)/;

            fx.start = cRE.exec(getClip(fx.elem));
            if (typeof fx.end === 'string') {
                fx.end = cRE.exec(fx.end.replace(/,/g, ' '));
            }
        }
        if (fx.start && fx.end) {
            var sarr = new Array(), earr = new Array(), spos = fx.start.length, epos = fx.end.length,
                emOffset = fx.start[ss + 1] == 'em' ? (parseInt($(fx.elem).css('fontSize')) * 1.333 * parseInt(fx.start[ss])) : 1;
            for (var ss = 1; ss < spos; ss += 2) { sarr.push(parseInt(emOffset * fx.start[ss])); }
            for (var es = 1; es < epos; es += 2) { earr.push(parseInt(emOffset * fx.end[es])); }
            fx.elem.style.clip = 'rect(' +
                parseInt((fx.pos * (earr[0] - sarr[0])) + sarr[0]) + 'px ' +
                parseInt((fx.pos * (earr[1] - sarr[1])) + sarr[1]) + 'px ' +
                parseInt((fx.pos * (earr[2] - sarr[2])) + sarr[2]) + 'px ' +
                parseInt((fx.pos * (earr[3] - sarr[3])) + sarr[3]) + 'px)';
        }
    }
})(jQuery);

Answer 3

@Shivan Raptor

To control duration, add duration: 3000, before the step attribute. So, the code would state:

$('#A').on('click', function() {

    $(".img1").animate({
      fontSize: 1
    },
    {
      duration:3000,
      step: function(now, fx) {
          $(this).css('clip', 'rect(0px, '+(now+30)+'px, '+(now+30)+'px, 0px)')
      }
    }, 1000);


});

You have to play around with exactly how you want the animation to run, but this should help.