For a demonstration of the issue, please visit http://jsbin.com/omuqo.
Upon opening a panel by clicking on the handle, there is a slight jitter in the panels below during the animation.
In the provided demo, all panels should remain completely still as they are of equal height. However, the jitter becomes noticeable when dealing with more complex accordions with panels of varying heights and additional animations like easing.
To troubleshoot this issue, I decided to forego using the jQuery UI accordion plugin and implemented my own solution based on the advice offered here.
If the jsbin link is not functional, here is the complete code:
The HTML:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>Sandbox</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
* { margin: 0; padding: 0; }
body { background-color: #fff; font: 16px Helvetica, Arial; color: #000; }
dt { background-color: #ccc; }
dd { height: 100px; }
#footer { background-color: #ff9; }
</style>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
<body>
<dl>
<dt>Handle</dt>
<dd id="1">Content</dd>
<dt>Handle</dt>
<dd id="2">Content</dd>
<dt>Handle</dt>
<dd id="3">Content</dd>
<dt>Handle</dt>
<dd id="4">Content</dd>
</dl>
<div id="footer">
Some more content
</div>
</body>
</html>
And the Javascript:
$.fn.accordion = function() {
return this.each(function() {
$container = $(this);
// Hijack handles.
$container.find("dt").each(function() {
var $header = $(this);
var $content = $header.next();
$header
.click(function() {
$container
.find("dd:visible")
.animate({ height: 0 }, { duration: 300, complete: function() {
$(this).hide();
}
});
if(!$content.is(":visible")) {
$content
.show()
$content
.animate({ height : heights[$content.attr("id")] }, { duration: 300 });
}
return false;
});
});
// Iterate over panels, save heights, hide all.
var heights = new Object();
$container.find("dd").each(function() {
$this = $(this);
heights[$this.attr("id")] = $this.height();
$this
.hide()
.css({ height : 0 });
});
});
};
$(document).ready(function() {
$("dl").accordion();
});
For a smoother accordion implementation, you can refer to the website Muxtape.
Any suggestions or feedback?