jquery “animate” variable value

Question

I need to \"animate\" a variable with jquery.

Example: The variable value is 1. The value should be 10 after 5 seconds. It should be increase \"smoothl

Answer 1

As addition to Ties answer - you dont event need to append dummy element to the DOM. I do it like this:

$.fn.animateValueTo = function (value) {

    var that = this;

    $('')
        .css('display', 'none')
        .css('letter-spacing', parseInt(that.text()))
        .animate({ letterSpacing: value }, {
            duration: 1000,
            step: function (i) {
                that.text(parseInt(i));
            }
        });

    return this;
};