Fade-in and appear, fade-out and disappear using only css? - css

Question

I am trying to create a menu that fades in/out when a button is clicked, and I am trying to do the animation using CSS transitions.
Here is a sample of what I want to achieve
#menu{
background: red;
display: block;
overflow: hidden;
position: absolute;
width: 182px;
top: 1em;
padding: 0;
height: auto;
opacity: 0;
/* The menu must not be clickable/cover the UI once hidden */
left: -100000px;
/*
The left property must change after the
opacity is zero and before it starts to
increase
*/
transition: opacity 0.25s 0.1s, left 0s; /* ??? */
-webkit-transition: opacity 0.25s 0.1, left 0s; /* Safari */
}
#menu.open{
opacity: 1;
left: auto;
}
http://jsfiddle.net/AzKAk/5/
Of course that only works half way, when the menu appears it DOES fade in, but when it has to fade out, this must happen after the element has its proper position.
Is it possible to do such thing using only CSS3?

Answer 1

I am assuming your intention is to have the menu appear/disappear in-place without any movement.
To do that you actually have to use a combination of two properties: opacity, and display.
The change in opacity will make the menu disappear, but once it reaches opacity:0 it will be invisible but still exist and receive user interaction.
So, you have to make sure that after the opacity transition is done, you have to change the display to none.
You can do this using the transitionend event (webkitTransitionEnd on Chome/Safari).
Your code would look something like this: http://jsfiddle.net/daniran/GfbVV/
I'm using jQuery in the example, but you can just as easily register the listeners directly using ontransitionend property;