Effects and Speed

When we include a speed with .show() or .hide(), it becomes animated—occurring over a specified period of time. The .hide('speed') method, for example, will decrease an element’s height, width, and opacity simultaneously until all three reach zero, at which point the CSS rule display:none is applied. The .show('speed') method will increase the element’s height from top to bottom, width from left to right, and opacity from 0 to 1 until its contents are completely visible.

Speeding In

With any jQuery effect, we can use one of three speeds: slow, normal, and fast. Using .show('slow') would make the show effect complete in .6 seconds, .show('normal') in .4 seconds, and .show('fast') in .2 seconds. For even greater precision we can specify a number of milliseconds, for example .show(850). Unlike the speed names, the numbers are not wrapped in quotation marks.

Let’s include a speed in our example when showing the second paragraph of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

$(document).ready...