CSS3 background image transition

Question

I'm trying to make a "fade-in fade-out" effect using the CSS transition. But I can't get this to work with the background image...

The CSS:

.title a {
    display: block;
    width: 340px;
    height: 338px;
    color: black;
    background: transparent;
    /* TRANSITION */
    -webkit-transition: background 1s;
    -moz-transition: background 1s;
    -o-transition: background 1s;
    transition: background 1s;
}

.title a:hover {
    background: transparent;
    background: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-p1nr1fkWKUo/T0zUp5CLO3I/AAAAAAAAAWg/jDiQ0cUBuKA/s800/red-pattern.png) repeat;
    /* TRANSITION */
    -webkit-transition: background 1s;
    -moz-transition: background 1s;
    -o-transition: background 1s;
    transition: background 1s;
}​

Take a look: http://jsfiddle.net/AK3La/

Answer 1

The solution (that I found by myself) is a ninja trick, I can offer you two ways:

first you need to make a "container" for the <img>, it will contain normal and hover states at the same time:

<div class="images-container">
    <img src="http://lorempixel.com/400/200/animals/9/">
    <img src="http://lorempixel.com/400/200/animals/10/">
</div>

• with CSS3 selectors http://jsfiddle.net/eD2zL/1/ (if you use this one, "normal" state will be first child your container, or change the nth-child() order)

• CSS2 solution http://jsfiddle.net/eD2zL/2/ (differences between are just a few selectors)

Basically, you need to hide "normal" state and show their "hover" when you hover it

and that's it, I hope somebody find it useful.

Answer 2

With Chris's inspiring post here:

https://css-tricks.com/different-transitions-for-hover-on-hover-off/

I managed to come up with this:

#banner
{
    display:block;
    width:100%;
    background-repeat:no-repeat;
    background-position:center bottom;
    background-image:url(../images/image1.jpg);
    /* HOVER OFF */
    @include transition(background-image 0.5s ease-in-out); 

    &:hover
    {
        background-image:url(../images/image2.jpg);
        /* HOVER ON */
        @include transition(background-image 0.5s ease-in-out); 
    }
}

Answer 3

Considering background-images can't be animated, I created a little SCSS mixin allowing to transition between 2 different background-images using pseudo selectors before and after. They are at different z-index layers. The one that is ahead starts with opacity 0 and becomes visible with hover.

You can use it the same approach for creating animations with linear-gradients too.

scss

@mixin bkg-img-transition( $bkg1, $bkg2, $transTime:0.5s ){  
  position: relative;  
  z-index: 100; 
  &:before, &:after {
    background-size: cover;  
    content: '';    
    display: block;
    height: 100%;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0; left: 0;    
    width: 100%;    
    transition: opacity $transTime;
  }
  &:before {    
    z-index: -101;
    background-image: url("#{$bkg1}");    
  }
  &:after {    
    z-index: -100;
    opacity: 0;
    background-image: url("#{$bkg2}");    
  }
  &:hover {
     &:after{
       opacity: 1; 
     }
  }  
}

Now you can simply use it with

@include bkg-img-transition("https://picsum.photos/300/300/?random","https://picsum.photos/g/300/300");

You can check it out here: https://jsfiddle.net/pablosgpacheco/01rmg0qL/

Answer 4

You can transition background-image. Use the CSS below on the img element:

-webkit-transition: background-image 0.2s ease-in-out;
transition: background-image 0.2s ease-in-out;

This is supported natively by Chrome, Opera and Safari. Firefox hasn't implemented it yet (bugzil.la). Not sure about IE.

Answer 5

If you can use jQuery, you can try BgSwitcher plugin to switch the background-image with effects, it's very easy to use.

For example :

$('.bgSwitch').bgswitcher({
        images: ["style/img/bg0.jpg","style/img/bg1.jpg","style/img/bg2.jpg"],
        effect: "fade",
        interval: 10000
});

And add your own effect, see adding an effect types

Answer 6

Unfortunately you can't use transition on background-image, see the w3c list of animatable properties.

You may want to do some tricks with background-position.