How to do fade-in and fade-out with JavaScript and CSS

I want to make an HTML div tag fade in and fade out.

I have some code that fades out, but when I fade in, the opacity of the div stays at 0.1 and doesn't increase.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
 <head>
    <title>Fade to Black</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        //<![CDATA[
        function slidePanel(elementToSlide, slideSource)
        {
            var element = document.getElementById(elementToSlide);

            if(element.up == null || element.up == false) {
                setTimeout("fadeOut(\"" + elementToSlide + "\")", 100);
                element.up = true;
                slideSource.innerHTML = "Bring it down";
            } else {
                setTimeout("fadeIn(\"" + elementToSlide + "\")", 100);
                element.up = false;
                slideSource.innerHTML = "Take it up";
            }
        }

        function fadeIn(elementToFade)
        {
            var element = document.getElementById(elementToFade);

            element.style.opacity += 0.1;
            if(element.style.opacity > 1.0) {
                element.style.opacity = 1.0;
            } else {
                setTimeout("fadeIn(\"" + elementToFade + "\")", 100);
            }
        }

        function fadeOut(elementToFade)
        {
            var element = document.getElementById(elementToFade);

            element.style.opacity -= 0.1;
            if(element.style.opacity < 0.0) {
                element.style.opacity = 0.0;
            } else {
                setTimeout("fadeOut(\"" + elementToFade + "\")", 100);
            }
        }
        //]]>
    </script>
 </head>
 <body>
    <div>
        <div id="slideSource"
              style="width:150px; height:20px;
                    text-align:center; background:green"
             onclick="slidePanel('panel', this)">
            Take It up
        </div>
        <div id="panel"
              style="width:150px; height:130px;
                    text-align:center; background:red;
                    opacity:1.0;">
            Contents
        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

What am I doing wrong and what is the best way to fade in and fade out an element?


Here is a more efficient way of fading out an element:

function fade(element) {
    var op = 1;  // initial opacity
    var timer = setInterval(function () {
        if (op <= 0.1){
            clearInterval(timer);
            element.style.display = 'none';
        }
        element.style.opacity = op;
        element.style.filter = 'alpha(opacity=' + op * 100 + ")";
        op -= op * 0.1;
    }, 50);
}

you can do the reverse for fade in

setInterval or setTimeout should not get a string as argument

google the evils of eval to know why

And here is a more efficient way of fading in an element.

function unfade(element) {
    var op = 0.1;  // initial opacity
    element.style.display = 'block';
    var timer = setInterval(function () {
        if (op >= 1){
            clearInterval(timer);
        }
        element.style.opacity = op;
        element.style.filter = 'alpha(opacity=' + op * 100 + ")";
        op += op * 0.1;
    }, 10);
}

Here is a simplified running example of Seattle Ninja's solution.

var slideSource = document.getElementById('slideSource');

document.getElementById('handle').onclick = function () {
  slideSource.classList.toggle('fade');
}
#slideSource {
  opacity: 1;
  transition: opacity 1s; 
}

#slideSource.fade {
  opacity: 0;
}
<button id="handle">Fade</button> 
<div id="slideSource">Whatever you want here - images or text</div>

why do that to yourself?

jQuery:

$("#element").fadeOut();
$("#element").fadeIn();

I think that's easier.

www.jquery.com


Here's my attempt with Javascript and CSS3 animation So the HTML:

 <div id="handle">Fade</div> 
 <div id="slideSource">Whatever you want images or  text here</div>

The CSS3 with transitions:

div#slideSource {
opacity:1;
-webkit-transition: opacity 3s;
-moz-transition: opacity 3s;     
transition: opacity 3s; 
}

div#slideSource.fade {
opacity:0;
}

The Javascript part. Check if the className exists, if it does then add the class and transitions.

document.getElementById('handle').onclick = function(){
    if(slideSource.className){
        document.getElementById('slideSource').className = '';
    } else {
        document.getElementById('slideSource').className = 'fade';
    }
}

Just click and it will fade in and out. I would recommend using JQuery as Itai Sagi mentioned. I left out Opera and MS, so I would recommend using prefixr to add that in the css. This is my first time posting on stackoverflow but it should work fine.