jQuery function that modifies a DIV

Question

How can I shorten and optimize this code which displays then hides a DIV?

setTimeout(function () {
 $('.updateNotification').show().addClass('heightener');
 callback();
},2000)
function callback() {
 setTimeout(function() {
 $( '.updateNotification' ).fadeOut();
 }, 10000 );
};

My first thought was to combine the functions. However, I would like them to remain separate because at a later date I will additionally incorporate a button which will trigger callback() in addition to the timer.

Answer 1

I'm not sure how you would shorten this code. However I think that callback is a terrible name for a function that fades a CSS class. Remember that a function signature should represent what a function does and with that said I would rename it to something like fadeUpdateNotification().

And in the fashion of fading you could replace .show() with .fadeIn() to have the div fade in and out - I dunno how your styling/website looks like but that might look nice...

Answer 2

There's not much here to optimize mostly because there's very little here. A few things you could do:

Store your selection to a variable outside both functions (bad idea if you may have multiple notificationDivs).

var notificationDiv = $( '.updateNotification' )

You could save 1 character by adding the callback to the show animation (not really an improvement):

notificationDiv.show(0,callback)

I'm more confused about why you're doing the setTimeouts the way you are. Why do you need a 2 second delay to show the div? Also if you plan to call callback later, I think it'd confuse most people if the div takes 10 seconds to start to disappear.

Here's a fiddle I used while tinkering.

Answer 3

if you want to combine them you can just do it like this

$('.updateNotification').delay(2000).show(0).addClass('heightener').delay(10000).fadeOut(); 

http://jsfiddle.net/4XYg8/

or to keep the callback function something like this

var notifications= $('.updateNotification'); //store the selection like Daniel Cook said
setTimeout(function () {
 //if you use the no-arguments form of .show()
 //you can just add display:block on the class .heightener
 notifications.addClass('heightener');
 callback();
},2000);
function callback() {
 notifications.delay(10000).fadeOut();//if you only want to fadeOut you can use delay
}; 

http://jsfiddle.net/4XYg8/1/

• Daniel: I knew someone would know the "correct" way to combine it. +1