Create a Stunning Sliding Door Effect with jQuery

Written by Kevin Liew on 31 Aug 2009
173,095 Views • Tutorials

Introduction

Continue from our previous thumbnail effect series. This is the third one. If you missed the previous two, you can visit the following links:

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This tutorial is going to be awesome! I got inspired by my friend's Image Splitting Effect from Tutsvalley. I decided to take one step further, create a four corners sliding door effect.

Basically, this is what it does:

  • Grab all the div with qitem class, find the image and replace it with four DIVs (four corners)
  • Each of the corner will have the same background image (grabbed from qitem class's child image element) but with different background position: top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right. It will still look like a whole image, however, the image is actually replaced by DIVd and divided into four portions.
  • Mouse over and mouse out event will move the corners diagonally out and in according to the mouse event.
  • Caption will be displayed after the corners have moved out.
  • If user clicked on it, it will execute the link assign to the item.

The following image illustrate how it works:

jQuery Slicing Structure

1. HTML

It's a good practise to keep HTML as simple as possible. HTML always can be simplified using CSS and Javascript. As a result from the simplification, This is the html for a single item. We can duplicate it into more than one.

In the demo, we can see there are total of 9 items. Please be aware that, in this tutorial, we are using float:left and clear:both in CSS to create the multi column and rows. Make sure the floating is cleared to ensure it doesnt mess up your existing website layout.

<div class="qitem">
	<a href="http://www.google.com"><img data-src="1.gif" alt="Test 1" title="" width="126" height="126"/></a>
	<span class="caption"><h4>Night Club</h4><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.</p></span>
</div>

2. CSS

In CSS section, it's quite simple. We have a class called qitem. qitem must be overflow:hidden to hide those four corners, float:left to create the milti rows and columns and cursor:hand/ cursor:pointer to let uses know they can click on it.

For caption, position:absolute is a must to se the z-index. Caption should be layered under the four corners

We need to set the generic setting for all the corners. We can do this in javascript, but it would be more efficient and simpler to do it with CSS. You see, the good thing in web development is, one problem can have different type of solutions.

body {
	font-family:arial;	
}

.qitem {
	/* width and height must be even number */
	width:126px;
	height:126px;	
	
	/* some styling for the item */
	border:4px solid #222;	
	margin:5px 5px 5px 0;
	background: url('bg.gif') no-repeat;
	
	/* make sure the four divs are hidden after changing the position */
	overflow:hidden;
	
	/* absolute position enabled for children elements*/
	position:relative;
	
	/* display item in single row */
	float:left;
	
	/* hand symbol for ie and other browser */
	cursor:hand; cursor:pointer;
}

	.qitem img {
		border:0;
	}

	/* styling for caption, position absolute is a must to set the z-index */
	.qitem .caption {
		position:absolute;
		z-index:0;	
		color:#ccc;
		display:block;
	}

		.qitem .caption h4 {
			font-size:12px;
			padding:10px 5px 0 8px;
			margin:0;
			color:#369ead;
		}

		.qitem .caption p {
			font-size:10px;	
			padding:3px 5px 0 8px;
			margin:0;
		}



/* Generic setting for corners */
.topLeft, .topRight, .bottomLeft, .bottomRight {
	/* allow javascript to move the corners */
	position:absolute;
	background-repeat: no-repeat; 
	z-index:200;
}

/* set the background position for different corners */
.topLeft {
	background-position: top left; 	
} 

.topRight {
	background-position: top right; 
} 

.bottomLeft {
	background-position: bottom left; 
} 

.bottomRight {
	background-position: bottom right; 
}

.clear {
	clear:both;	
}

3. Javascript

Javascript is abit messy this time. But I have isolated all the configurable setting on the top to make it easier to change. Basically, this is what it does:

  1. When the document is ready, it counts all the value for all corners
  2. Using each() to loop through the the item, in the loop:
    • Grab all the details: url, image path
    • Remove the img element
    • Append the four corners
    • Set the background image (image path grabbed from img element) to all the corners
    • Set the position to all the corners
    • * Due to IE7, you need to make sure the image/qitem size is even number, so that the divided value is whole number. IE7 doesn't render fraction value properly.
  3. On mouse over event: Set correct values to all the corners and animate them so that the corners are moving away from the qitem.
  4. On mouse out event: reset all the corners and animate them so that the corners are moving back to where there were.
  5. On click: execute the link (grabbed from anchor element).

The following image illustrate the calculation:

jQuery Slicing Structure

In the javascript below, we have a section for the calculation. If you look at the image above carefully, assume the item width is 126px, and values that we need to generate is 0px, 63px, -63px and 126px

Hence, (the item size we used in this tutorial is 126px)

  • var neg = Math.round($('.qitem').width() / 2) * (-1);
    (126 / 2) * (-1), neg = -63px
  • var pos = neg * (-1);
    neg = -63px, pos = (-63) * -(1), pos = 63px
  • var out = pos * 2;
    pos = 63px, pos = 63 * 2, pos = 126px

Now, we know all the mathematic calculations, how it works. It's time to combine everything into one piece!

	
$(document).ready(function() {

	//Custom settings
	var style_in = 'easeOutBounce';
	var style_out = 'jswing';
	var speed_in = 1000;
	var speed_out = 300;	

	//Calculation for corners
	var neg = Math.round($('.qitem').width() / 2) * (-1);	
	var pos = neg * (-1);	
	var out = pos * 2;
	
	$('.qitem').each(function () {
	
		//grab the anchor and image path
		url = $(this).find('a').attr('href');
		img = $(this).find('img').attr('src');
		
		//remove the image
		$('img', this).remove();
		
		//append four corners/divs into it
		$(this).append('<div class="topLeft"></div><div class="topRight"></div><div class="bottomLeft"></div><div class="bottomRight"></div>');
		
		//set the background image to all the corners
		$(this).children('div').css('background-image','url('+ img + ')');

		//set the position of corners
		$(this).find('div.topLeft').css({top:0, left:0, width:pos , height:pos});	
		$(this).find('div.topRight').css({top:0, left:pos, width:pos , height:pos});	
		$(this).find('div.bottomLeft').css({bottom:0, left:0, width:pos , height:pos});	
		$(this).find('div.bottomRight').css({bottom:0, left:pos, width:pos , height:pos});	

	}).hover(function () {
	
		//animate the position
		$(this).find('div.topLeft').stop(false, true).animate({top:neg, left:neg}, {duration:speed_out, easing:style_out});	
		$(this).find('div.topRight').stop(false, true).animate({top:neg, left:out}, {duration:speed_out, easing:style_out});	
		$(this).find('div.bottomLeft').stop(false, true).animate({bottom:neg, left:neg}, {duration:speed_out, easing:style_out});	
		$(this).find('div.bottomRight').stop(false, true).animate({bottom:neg, left:out}, {duration:speed_out, easing:style_out});	
				
	},
	
	function () {

		//put corners back to the original position
		$(this).find('div.topLeft').stop(false, true).animate({top:0, left:0}, {duration:speed_in, easing:style_in});	
		$(this).find('div.topRight').stop(false, true).animate({top:0, left:pos}, {duration:speed_in, easing:style_in});	
		$(this).find('div.bottomLeft').stop(false, true).animate({bottom:0, left:0}, {duration:speed_in, easing:style_in});	
		$(this).find('div.bottomRight').stop(false, true).animate({bottom:0, left:pos}, {duration:speed_in, easing:style_in});	
	
	}).click (function () {
		
		//go to the url
		window.location = $(this).find('a').attr('href');	
	});

});

Conclusion

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104 comments
Adam Bell 14 years ago
@kevin I figured out the issue. Actually, it's kind of interesting and took a lot of dissecting the file to figure it out. It's not a conflict with another plugin (although for awhile, I thought it was my lightbox plugin), but instead it doesn't work with the full version of JQuery (in this case, 1.4.2) but does work with the min version (1.3.1) which I grabbed from the Queness site and placed on my server. It now works. Still it's very unusual. Why should I need to install both? But thanks for the help in any case.
Reply
external sliding doors 14 years ago
I really like your post you done a great jobs . Thanks for sharing valuable information.
Reply
kevin Admin 14 years ago
Hi Adam, hmm, I'm not sure what's happening too. Maybe the script doesn't support the new jquery. But it supposed to be backward compatible. anw, thanks for letting me know!
Reply
asmar 14 years ago
great work.....
Reply
Nadine 13 years ago
@Nishant I was wondering for the answer for that same problem! I'm working on a layout/portal for my websites using this amazing code, but my problem was opening it in a new window. Just edit the click function in the javascript , and instead make it "window.open(window.location = $(this).find('a').attr('href'););" *without quotes and it will open in a new window.

Thank you for this great script!
Reply
Nadine 13 years ago
Wait, I was wrong, xD instead of that you should replace the click function with "window.open( $(this).find('a').attr('href'));" w/o quotes. It won't slide anymore with the earlier code I gave. XD
Reply
Brett Widmann 13 years ago
Great effect! Thanks for sharing.
Reply
elyndel 13 years ago
Is it possible to center the rollover effect with a non-even sized div? For example by a 212px width and 158px height img.
Reply
Valikonen 13 years ago
Very cool collection, thanks!!! If you want to see other gallery and menus, vizit http://www.1artmedia.com , you have online demo and free download, bye!
Reply
surag 13 years ago
Can i open a popup from the image like highslide? please help
Reply
Kevin Liew Admin 13 years ago
Yes, pretty sure you can... I define your "popup up" as in open in new window?

You can do it by replacing this line:
window.location = $(this).find('a').attr('href');

to

window.open($(this).find('a').attr('href'));
Reply
Jose 13 years ago
yeah great but can center all the square to the center of my page?
Reply
raymond 13 years ago
It's just what I need to complete my site
thank you for sharing this file

http://bit.ly/scriptmethis
Reply
Ian 13 years ago
Great effect, my only problem is that the sliding door effect works fine, but if safari and chrome the captions that i put in dont show, just blank white. please help
Reply