css - Fade Effect on Link Hover?

Question

on many sites, such as http://www.clearleft.com, you'll notice that when the links are hovered over, they will fade into a different color as opposed to immediately switching, the default action.

I assume JavaScript is used to create this effect, does anyone know how?

Answer 1

Nowadays people are just using CSS3 transitions because it's a lot easier than messing with JS, browser support is reasonably good and it's merely cosmetic so it doesn't matter if it doesn't work.

Something like this gets the job done:

a {
  color:blue;
  /* First we need to help some browsers along for this to work.
     Just because a vendor prefix is there, doesn't mean it will
     work in a browser made by that vendor either, it's just for
     future-proofing purposes I guess. */
  -o-transition:.5s;
  -ms-transition:.5s;
  -moz-transition:.5s;
  -webkit-transition:.5s;
  /* ...and now for the proper property */
  transition:.5s;
}
a:hover { color:red; }

You can also transition specific CSS properties with different timings and easing functions by separating each declaration with a comma, like so:

a {
  color:blue; background:white;
  -o-transition:color .2s ease-out, background 1s ease-in;
  -ms-transition:color .2s ease-out, background 1s ease-in;
  -moz-transition:color .2s ease-out, background 1s ease-in;
  -webkit-transition:color .2s ease-out, background 1s ease-in;
  /* ...and now override with proper CSS property */
  transition:color .2s ease-out, background 1s ease-in;
}
a:hover { color:red; background:yellow; }

Demo here