Animation of KML placemarks and description possible within KML only (Google Earth Tour)?

Question

I'm dealing with animating a placemark and its description/label in a Google Earth Tour. So far I've accomplished animation of a placemark's tooltip ballon via

<gx:AnimatedUpdate>
    <gx:duration>0.0</gx:duration>
    <Update>
      <targetHref/>
      <Change>
        <Placemark targetId="placemarkpin1">
          <gx:balloonVisibility>1</gx:balloonVisibility>
        </Placemark>
      </Change>
    </Update>
  </gx:AnimatedUpdate>

But trying the same with a placemark and its description aka label (as in this tour it would make sense to show the placemark at the end) doesn't seem to work:

  <gx:AnimatedUpdate>
    <gx:duration>1.0</gx:duration>
    <Update>
      <targetHref></targetHref>
      <Change>
        <IconStyle targetId="pushpin-placemark_normalstate">
          <scale>1.0</scale>
        </IconStyle>
        <LabelStyle targetId="pushpin-placemark_normalstate">
          <scale>1.0</scale>
        </LabelStyle>
      </Change>
    </Update>
  </gx:AnimatedUpdate>

scale is per definition at beginning at 0.0 The both animations are in two separate gx:AnimatedUpdate siblings one after the other at the end of the tour.

I can only work in the KML file, there's no possibility to add JS in this project.

Answer 1

Use unique ids for both the IconStyle and LabelStyle tags and refer to these in the targetHref for updates.

Note: Multiple changes can appear in a single <Change> element (as you have in your original example) or each can be wrapped in its own Change element as children of the <Update> element (as shown below).

 <Style id="pushpin">
      <IconStyle id="myiconstyle">
        ...
      </IconStyle>
      <LabelStyle id="mylabelstyle">
        ...
      </LabelStyle>
 </Style>

 <gx:AnimatedUpdate>
    <gx:duration>1.0</gx:duration>
    <Update>
      <targetHref></targetHref>
      <Change>
        <IconStyle targetId="myiconstyle">
          <scale>1.0</scale>
        </IconStyle>
      </Change>
      <Change>
        <LabelStyle targetId="mylabelstyle">
          <scale>1.0</scale>
        </LabelStyle>
      </Change>
    </Update>
  </gx:AnimatedUpdate>

You can find a complete example with a working tour doing exactly this here: http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2009/04/tours-in-kml-animating-camera-and.html