Why animate function doesn't support transform property?

Question

The line
.........
$('#id'). animate({transform:rotate(360deg)},5000)
.........

//This Same line works in case I wrote left:'500px' instead of transform property

Answer 1

The animate function in jQuery is primarily designed to animate numeric CSS properties. When you use it to animate properties like left, top, width, or opacity, it works as expected because it can interpolate between different numeric values.

However, the transform property is a bit different. It can take various values that are not just numeric. For example, you might want to rotate an element using transform: rotate(45deg), or scale it using transform: scale(2). The transform property can also include multiple transformation functions, such as combining rotation and scaling in a single transform property value.

jQuery's animate function is not designed to handle these complex and non-numeric values of the transform property. It's difficult for jQuery to calculate the intermediate steps when you want to animate from one transformation to another because the values aren't simple numeric values like with left or top.

If you want to animate the transform property, you can consider using CSS transitions or animations directly, or you can use a more modern JavaScript animation library like GreenSock (GSAP), which provides robust support for animating the transform property and many other CSS properties. Here's an example of how you can use GSAP to animate the transform property:

// Include GSAP in your HTML document
// <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/gsap/3.10.1/gsap.min.js"></script>

// Use GSAP to animate the transform property
gsap.to("#id", { rotation: 360, duration: 5 });

In the above code, we use GSAP to animate the rotation of the element to 360 degrees over 5 seconds. GSAP handles the complexities of animating the transform property for you.

Answer 2

Okay and what code should I do if I want two css property to animate simulteneously. Like moving in x axis also rotating