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7
Dec/082

How to: Use MooTools to Fade Between Multiple Images

After I wrote my post “Using MooTools to fade between two images” I have received many request on how to fade between multiple images. So here is “How to: Use MooTools to Fade Between Multiple Images”. We start with the same HTML setup as we do in “Using MooTools to fade between two images” plus a few buttons; setup two DIV tags that are absolutely positioned over one another inside another DIV tag that uses default placement. Then you place your image tags inside each of the absolutely positioned DIV tags. Each of the DIV tags needs to have an id attribute so they can be referenced in your javascript code.

The HTML for the task will look like this:

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<div id="button1" style="background-color:#aaaaaa; border: 1px solid #444; cursor: pointer;" onclick="toggle(this.image.src);">Image 1</div>
<div id="button2" style="background-color:#aaaaaa; border: 1px solid #444; cursor: pointer;" onclick="toggle(this.image.src);">Image 2</div>
<div id="button3" style="background-color:#aaaaaa; border: 1px solid #444; cursor: pointer;" onclick="toggle(this.image.src);">Image 3</div>
<div id="button4" style="background-color:#aaaaaa; border: 1px solid #444; cursor: pointer;" onclick="toggle(this.image.src);">Image 4</div>
<div style="height:112px;" >
<div id="div1" style="position:absolute; opacity: 0;"><img id="image1" src="image1.jpg" /></div>
<div id="div2" style="position:absolute; opacity: 1;"><img id="image2" src="image2.jpg" /></div>
</div>

For fading between multiple images there is some preparation we will need to do before we are ready to start switching images. First you need to create an object to associate buttons to your image source URLs, this makes it easy to change the number of buttons and images they load later. Then iterate that object creating new elements for each image and attaching them to the buttons. Creating new images and attaching them to the buttons does two things, it pre-loads the images and associates the image to the button that will show the image.

creating the object can be done with JavaScript Object Notation:

1	var buttonsAndImages = {'button1':'image1.jpg','button2':'image2.jpg','button3':'image3.jpg','button4':'image4.jpg'};

The loadImages function will take the buttionsAndImages object and create a new image object using the Mootools Element object and attach that image object to its associated button.

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function loadImages(buttonsAndImages){
for(biPairKey in buttonsAndImages) {
var image = new Element('img',{ src:buttonsAndImages[biPairKey], style:'margin:3px;' });
$(biPairKey).image = image;
}
}

For multiple image switching we will use a function named toggle. In the toggle function we will set the source of the hidden image, start the effect to fade out the visible image and fade in the hidden image, and set a global variable to indicate which div is visible

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Check out the demo of fading multiple images to see this in action. If you want to create a slide show or other implementation of this that automatically switches the images, read through my post on Delay, Periodical and Closures. Below you will find the source of the example:

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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/mootools-release-1.11.js" language="javascript"></script>
<script language="javascript">
var visibleDiv = $("div1");
function toggle(newSrc){
if($("div1").fx){$("div1").fx.stop();}
if($("div2").fx){$("div2").fx.stop();}
if(visibleDiv == $("div1")){
$("image2").src = newSrc;
$("div1").fx = new Fx.Style($("div1"), 'opacity', {duration: 2000}).start(0);
$("div2").fx = new Fx.Style($("div2"), 'opacity', {duration: 2000}).start(1);
visibleDiv = $("div2");
}else{
$("image1").src = newSrc;
$("div1").fx = new Fx.Style($("div1"), 'opacity', {duration: 2000}).start(1);
$("div2").fx = new Fx.Style($("div2"), 'opacity', {duration: 2000}).start(0);
visibleDiv = $("div1");
}
}

function loadImages(buttonsAndImages){
for(biPairKey in buttonsAndImages) {
var image = new Element('img',{ src:buttonsAndImages[biPairKey], style:'margin:3px;' });
$(biPairKey).image = image;
}
}

function faderInit(){
//create an object to store the relationship of the buttons to the images.
var buttonsAndImages = {'button1':'image1.jpg','button2':'image2.jpg','button3':'image3.jpg','button4':'image4.jpg'};
loadImages(buttonsAndImages);
}
window.addEvent("domready", faderInit);
</script>
<div style="width:453px">
<div id="button1" style="background-color:#aaaaaa; border: 1px solid #444; cursor: pointer;" onclick="toggle(this.image.src);">Image 1</div>
<div id="button2" style="background-color:#aaaaaa; border: 1px solid #444; cursor: pointer;" onclick="toggle(this.image.src);">Image 2</div>
<div id="button3" style="background-color:#aaaaaa; border: 1px solid #444; cursor: pointer;" onclick="toggle(this.image.src);">Image 3</div>
<div id="button4" style="background-color:#aaaaaa; border: 1px solid #444; cursor: pointer;" onclick="toggle(this.image.src);">Image 4</div>
<div style="height:112px;">
<div id="div1" style="position:absolute; opacity: 0;"><img id="image1" src="image1.jpg" /></div>
<div id="div2" style="position:absolute; opacity: 1;"><img id="image2" src="image2.jpg" /></div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>