Show text letter by letter
If a smooth reveal is reasonable then I think this should be pretty straightforward. Untested, but this is how I imagine it would work
html
<div id="text"><span>The intergalactic space agency</span></div>
css
div#text { width: 0px; height: 2em; white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden; }
jQuery
var spanWidth = $('#test span').width();
$('#text').animate( { width: spanWidth }, 1000 );
Okay, I couldn't resist and made a fiddle. One little code error that I fixed. Looks good to me though!
http://jsfiddle.net/mrtsherman/6qQrN/1/
HTML
<div id="msg"/>
Javascript
var showText = function (target, message, index, interval) {
if (index < message.length) {
$(target).append(message[index++]);
setTimeout(function () { showText(target, message, index, interval); }, interval);
}
}
Call with:
$(function () {
showText("#msg", "Hello, World!", 0, 500);
});