jQuery chained animation without plugin

Question

Before with jQuery I could do a chained animation with a delay between like so:

$("#element").delay(45).animate({ }, 45)
             .delay(45).animate({ }, 45)
             .delay(45).animate({ }, 45);

Now since the update to v1.6.1 instead of doing what it did previously, it now skips to the last animation. Ignoring the previous statements. I know I can do an oncomplete callback for each animation but that just get's messy:

$("#element").delay(45).animate({ }, 45, function(){
    $("#element").delay(45).animate({ }, 45, function(){
        $("#element").delay(45).animate({ }, 45);
    })
}) 

Does anyone know how I can accomplish this in a simple clean way?

Answer 1

Here is the second way as requested. I post it in another answer, because it is more complex, and perhaps less beautiful. To play with it see: http://jsfiddle.net/LMptt/1/

Usage: use a string with + or - to indicate a relative timestamp. The order matters for relative timestamps (relative to the previous action that is). Use "+0" or '-0' for the same timestamp as the previous one. Absolute timestamps (integers) can be put anywhere in the list.

$(document).ready(function ()
{
    queue([
        [2000, function () {  $('.two').slideUp(); }],
        ['-1000', function () {  $('.one').slideUp(); }],
        [3000, function () {  $('.three').slideUp(); }],
        ['+1000', function () {  $('.four').slideUp(); }]
    ]);

});

/**
 * Queue.js
 *
 * @author Arend van Waart
 *
 *  This will allow for events to be queued by (relative) timestamp
 */

 function queue (queue){
    var self = this;
    // queue
    this.queue = queue;
    // time passed is 0
    this.timePassed = 0;
    // time in ms to sleep between checks.
    this.sleep = 100;

    var time = new Date();
    this.lastTime = time.getTime();
    this.iterate = function(){
        var total = 0;
        var time = new Date();

        // how much time has passed since we slept?
        self.timePassed = self.timePassed + (time.getTime() - self.lastTime);
        self.lastTime = time.getTime();

        for (var i in self.queue) {
            if (self.queue[i][0] <= self.timePassed){
                self.queue[i][1]();
                self.queue.splice(i,1);
            } else {
                // added sorting now, so we don't have to evaluate the rest.
                break;
            }
        }

        if (self.queue.length == 0){
            return;
        }else{
            setTimeout(self.iterate, self.sleep);
        }
    }


    this.parseRelative = function ()
    {
        var absoluteQueue = [];
        var lastAbsolute = 0;
        for (var i in queue)
        {
           var absolute;
           var firstChar = String(queue[i][0]).charAt(0);
           if (firstChar == "+" ||  firstChar == "-")
           {
              absolute = lastAbsolute + parseInt(queue[i][0]);
           } else {
              absolute = parseInt(queue[i][0]);
           }
           lastAbsolute = absolute;
           absoluteQueue.push([absolute, queue[i][1]]);
        }
        this.queue = absoluteQueue;
    }
    this.sort = function (a,b)
    {
        return a[0] - b[0];
    }

    this.parseRelative();
    this.queue.sort(this.sort);
    this.iterate();
}