jQuery slide is jumpy

I tried to slide in and out a DIV with the toggle function of jQuery but the result is always jumpy at the start and/or end of the animation. Here's the js code that I use:

$(document).ready(function(){
    $('#link1').click(
        function() {
            $('#note_1').parent().slideToggle(5000);
        }
);

And the HTML:

<div class="notice">
    <p>Here's some text. And more text. <span id="link1">Test1</span></p>
    <div class="wrapper">
        <div id="note_1">
            <p>Some content</p>
            <p>More blalba</p>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

You can also see the complete example here: jQuery Slide test

I usually use Mootools and I can do this slide without any problems with it. But I'm starting a new project in Django and most app in Django use jQuery. So for that and after reading this jQuery vs Mootools I decided that will be a good occasion to start using jQuery. So my first need was to slide this DIV. And it didn't work properly.

I did more search and I found that's an old bug in jQuery with margin and padding applied to the DIV. The solution is to wrap the DIV in another DIV. It didn't fix the thing in my case.

Searching further I found this post Slidedown animation jumprevisited. It fix a jump at one end but not at the other (Test2 in jQuery Slide test).

On Stack Overflow I found this jQuery IE jerky slide animation. In the comments I saw that the problem is with the P tag inside the DIV. If I replace the P tags with DIV tags that fix the problem but that's not a proper solution.

Lastly I found this Weird jQuery behavior slide. Reading it I understood that the problem resolved by switching from P tag to DIV was with the margins of the P (not present in the DIV) and the collapsing of margins between elements. So if I switch the margins to paddings it fix the problem. But I loose the collapsing behavior of margins, collapsing that I want.

Honestly I can say that my first experience with jQuery is not really good. If I want to use one of the simplest effect in jQuery I have to not use the proper function (slideToggle) but instead use some hand made code AND wrap the DIV in another DIV AND switch margins to paddings, messing my layout.

Did I miss a simpler solution ?

As krdluzni suggest, I tried to write as custom script with the animate method. Here's my code:

var $div = $('#note_2').parent();
var height = $div.height();

$('#link2').click(
    function () {
        if ( $div.height() > 0 ) {
            $div.animate({ height: 0 }, { duration: 5000 }).css('overflow', 'hidden');
        } else {
            $div.animate({ height : height }, { duration: 5000 });
        }
    
        return false;
});

But that doesn't work either because jQuery always set the overflow to visible at the end of the animation. So the DIV is reapearing at the end of the animation but overlaid on the rest of the content.

I tried also with UI.Slide (and Scale and Size). It works but the content below the DIV doesn't move with the animation. It only jump at the end/start of the animation to fill the gap. I don't want that.

UPDATE:

One part of the solution is to set the height of the container DIV dynamically before anything. This solve one jumping. But not the one cause by collapsing margin. Here's the code:

var parent_div = $("#note_1").parent();
parent_div.css("height", parent_div.height()+"px");
parent_div.hide();

SECOND UPDATE:

You can see the bug on the jQuery own site at this page (Example B): Tutorials:Live Examples of jQuery

THIRD UPDATE:

Tried with jQuery 1.4, no more chance :-(

I found what works consistently is setting an invisible 1px border:

border: 1px solid transparent;

No need to fix the width or height or anything else and the animation doesn't jump. Hooray!

The solution is that sliding div must have the width set in pixels. Do not use 'auto' nor '%'. And you will have great result! The problem is in inline elements thats are in a sliding div.

but if they have width in px the height will be identical. Try it.

I've ran into this problem today. I did notice however that disabling all CSS fixed the problem. Also I knew it worked fine before so it must have been recent changes that caused the issue.

It turned out I used transitions in CSS to ease in and out of hovers.

Once these transitions were removed from the elements I was adding everything was fine.

So if you have the same issue, just add these lines to the elements you're adding:

-webkit-transition: none;
-moz-transition: none;
-o-transition: none;
-ms-transition: none;
transition: none;

(I might have abused transitions a bit by not just adding them to the elements I want to have transitions for, but using them for the entire website.)

Try removing all CSS margins from all the elements. Usually jerky animation comes from margins not being taken into account by the animation framework.

Jerking happens when the parent div ".wrapper" in your case has padding.

Padding goes on the child div, not the parent. jQuery is animating height not padding.

Example:

  <div class="notice">
     <p>Here's some text. And more text. <span id="link1">Test1</span></p>
     <div class="wrapper" style="padding: 0">
        <div id="note_1" style="padding: 20px">
           <p>Some content</p>
           <p>More blalba</p>
        </div>
     </div>
   </div>

Hope this helps.

I find animate() is the most reliable way to animate anything in jQuery (cross browser at least).

This dynamically wraps the content in a div, then animates the height of that div wrapper by using the height of its inner content.

http://jsfiddle.net/BmWjy/13/

$('a').click(function(event) {
		event.preventDefault();
		xToggleHeight($(this).next());
});

//For each collapsible element.
$('.collapsible').each(function() {
		//Wrap a div around and set to hidden.
		$(this).wrap('<div style="height:0;overflow:hidden;visibility:hidden;"/>');
});

function xToggleHeight(el){
		//Get the height of the content including any margins.
		var contentHeight = el.children('.collapsible').outerHeight(true);
		//If the element is currently expanded.
		if(el.hasClass("expanded")){
				//Collapse
				el.removeClass("expanded")
						.stop().animate({height:0},5000,
						function(){
								//on collapse complete
								//Set to hidden so content is invisible.
								$(this).css({'overflow':'hidden', 'visibility':'hidden'});
						}
				);
		}else{
				//Expand
				el.addClass("expanded").css({'overflow':'', 'visibility':'visible'})
						.stop().animate({height: contentHeight},5000,
						function(){
								//on expanded complete
								//Set height to auto incase browser/content is resized afterwards.
								$(this).css('height','');
						}
				);
		}
}

You could write a custom animation using the animate method. This will give you absolute control over all details.

I noticed if you have a <br /> after your container <div> the animation will also be jumpy. Removing this resolved my problem.

css padding and jquery slideToggle doesn't work well together. Try to box out padding.

There are obviously a lot of different solutions to this issue - and depending on your layout, different solutions have different results.

Here was what I had (stripped down)

<div>
   <p>Text</p>
</div>
<div class="hidden">
   <p></p>
</div>

When I would use jQuery to show <div class="hidden">, the margin on the <p> element would collapse with the margin of the <p> element above it.

I thought it was strange since they were in different <divs>.

My solution was to eliminate the margin on the bottom of the <p>. Having a margin on one side prevents the margin from the bottom of the first <p> from collapsing with the top of the second <p>.

This workaround solved my problem, can probably be applied to others, but may not work for all.

You just have to modify the up, down effects in effects.js to have them take into account margins or paddings that may exist and then adjust what they perceive to be the total size of the element to accommodate those values...something along these lines....

Effect.BlindDown = function(element) {
  element = $(element);
  var elementDimensions = element.getDimensions();
 
//below*
  var paddingtop = parseInt(element.getStyle('padding-top'));
  var paddingbottom = parseInt(element.getStyle('padding-bottom'));
  var totalPadding = paddingtop + paddingbottom;
  
  if(totalPadding > 0)
  {
   elementDimensions.height = (elementDimensions.height - totalPadding);
  }
//above*

  return new Effect.Scale(element, 100, Object.extend({
    scaleContent: false,
    scaleX: false,
    scaleFrom: 0,
    scaleMode: {originalHeight: elementDimensions.height, originalWidth: elementDimensions.width},
    restoreAfterFinish: true,
    afterSetup: function(effect) {
      effect.element.makeClipping().setStyle({height: '0px'}).show();
    },
    afterFinishInternal: function(effect) {
      effect.element.undoClipping();
    }
  }, arguments[1] || { }));
};

Try setting the 'position' property of the the container (in this case the .notice div) to 'relative'.

Worked for me. Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2327952/slidetoggle-height-is-jumping

There are a lot of suggestions here and a lot of back and forth as to what works. For me, the behavior problem was when the animation of expanding the container would over expand and then bounce back to the correct expansion height (all done as part of the one animation). In way of example, the animation would expand to a height of 500px initially and then retract to 450px. There was no problem with collapse.

The solution that worked was to add to the expanding/collapsing div, a CSS of: white-space: nowrap;

That worked perfectly - smooth expansion to the correct height.

I had the same issue, but not a single one of the proposed solutions worked for me, so I propose a solution that eliminates relying on slideToggle() altogether.

Spark Notes: Load the page as normal, collect the height of each element you want to toggle, store that height in a special data attribute, and then collapse each element. Then it's as easy as changing the max-height between the value in the element's data-height attribute(expanded) and zero(collapsed). If you want to add extra padding and margins, etc to the elements, I recommend storing those in a separate CSS class to add and remove with the max-height property.

Place the jQuery right after the elements you want to toggle and allow them to execute during page load (so you don't have to watch them all load and then collapse).

HTML

<ul id="foo">
   <li>
      <h2>Click Me 1</h2>
      <div class="bar">Content To Toggle Here 1</div>
   </li>
   <li>
      <h2>Click Me 2</h2>
      <div class="bar">Content To Toggle Here 2</div>
   </li>
</ul>

CSS

#foo>li>div.bar {transition: all 0.5s;
   overflow: hidden;}

jQuery

$('#foo h2').each(function(){
   var bar = $(this).siblings('.bar');
   bar.attr('data-height', bar.height()); //figure out the height first
   bar.css('max-height', '0px'); //then close vertically
});
$('#foo h2').click(function(){
   var bar = $(this).siblings('.bar');
   if ( bar .css('max-height') == '0px' ){ //if closed (then open)
      bar.css('max-height', bar.data('height') + 'px');
   } else { //must be open (so close)
      bar.css('max-height', '0px');
   }
});

Here is a working JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/baacke/9WtvU/

The problem is that you are performing the action on the parent, doing this removes the CSS related to that element.

You need to run the slide on your note1, not the parent of note 1.

I had the same issue and fixed it by moving down a level.

For me removing the min-height from my container solved the problem.

You might try adding a doctype if you don't have one, it worked for me on IE8 after I found the suggestion here on SO: jQuery slideToggle jumps around. He suggests a strict DTD but I just used the doctype that google.com uses: <!doctype html> and it fixed my problem.

i came across the same bug took days to find a solution. the problem is when the element is hidden jquery is getting the wrong height. top fix it you must get the hight before hiding and use a custom animation to that height. its tricky go here for a better explanation

I had the same problem with 'jerkyness' with divs inside my nav tag - my aim is to show an unordered list on hover of the div (if one exists). My lists are dynamically created so they do not have a fixed value.

Heres the fix:

$("nav div").hover(
  function() { // i.e. onmouseover function

    /****simple lines to fix a % based height to a px based height****/
    var h = jQuery(this).find("ul").height(); //find the height
    jQuery(this).find("ul").css("height", h); 
                         //set the css height value to this fixed value
    /*****************************************************************/

    jQuery(this).find("ul").slideDown("500");
  },
  function(){ // i.e. onmouseout function
    jQuery(this).find("ul").slideUp("500");
  });
});

In my case I solved it adding style="white-space:nowrap;" to the element to prevent miscalculations on the jQuery function; no need to set a fixed width unless you need to wrap.

Make sure you don't have CSS transition rules set globally or on your container or any included elements. It will also cause jerkiness.

Ran into this issue today, saw this question, and started tinkering based on what I saw here. I solved our jumpy issue by removing the position:relative from the CSS of the containing div. No more weirdness after that. My 2 cents.

I was using slideDown() like this

$('#content').hide().delay(500).slideDown(500); 

For me, it was the main container #content element. I was having it hidden and then calling slideDown(). I removed the padding property in the CSS and everything worked fine after that. It's usually a margin, padding, or % width, so the easiest method is commenting out each property and testing them 1 by 1 to get your results.

I just learned that this problem can also occur if there are floated elements in the expanding/collapsing element. In that case, a clearfix (clear: both;) at the end (still within) the animated element can get rid of it.

I had the same issue. I fixed it by adding this:

.delay(100)

Guess giving it more time to think helps it along?

Adding my solution: turned out my issue was flexbox (only in chrome). I had align-items: baseline; set on the parent element. Set align-self: center; to my slideToggling full-width child element and it cleared it right up. Great use of two hours.

For me the solution was, that i had a CSS style definition like following:

* {
    transition: all .3s;
}

Removing this was the solution!