You can transition background-image. Use the CSS below on the img element:

-webkit-transition: background-image 0.2s ease-in-out; transition: background-image 0.2s ease-in-out; 

This is supported natively by Chrome, Opera and Safari. Firefox hasn't implemented it yet (bugzil.la). Not sure about IE.

The solution (that I found by myself) is a ninja trick, I can offer you two ways:

first you need to make a "container" for the <img>, it will contain normal and hover states at the same time:

<div class="images-container"> <img src="http://lorempixel.com/400/200/animals/9/"> <img src="http://lorempixel.com/400/200/animals/10/"> </div> 

• with CSS3 selectors http://jsfiddle.net/eD2zL/1/ (if you use this one, "normal" state will be first child your container, or change the nth-child() order)

• CSS2 solution http://jsfiddle.net/eD2zL/2/ (differences between are just a few selectors)

Basically, you need to hide "normal" state and show their "hover" when you hover it

and that's it, I hope somebody find it useful.

Unfortunately you can't use transition on background-image, see the w3c list of animatable properties.

You may want to do some tricks with background-position.

I've figured out a solution that worked for me...

If you have a list item (or div) containing only the link, and let's say this is for social links on your page to facebook, twitter, ect. and you're using a sprite image you can do this:

<li id="facebook"><a href="facebook.com"></a></li> 

Make the "li"s background your button image

#facebook { width:30px; height:30px; background:url(images/social) no-repeat 0px 0px; } 

Then make the link's background image the hover state of the button. Also add the opacity attribute to this and set it to 0.

#facebook a { display:inline-block; background:url(images/social) no-repeat 0px -30px; opacity:0; } 

Now all you need is "opacity" under "a:hover" and set this to 1.

#facebook a:hover { opacity:1; } 

Add the opacity transition attributes for each browser to "a" and "a:hover" so the the final css will look something like this:

#facebook { width:30px; height:30px; background:url(images/social) no-repeat 0px 0px; } #facebook a { display:inline-block; background:url(images/social) no-repeat 0px -30px; opacity:0; -webkit-transition: opacity 200ms linear; -moz-transition: opacity 200ms linear; -o-transition: opacity 200ms linear; -ms-transition: opacity 200ms linear; transition: opacity 200ms linear; } #facebook a:hover { opacity:1; -webkit-transition: opacity 200ms linear; -moz-transition: opacity 200ms linear; -o-transition: opacity 200ms linear; -ms-transition: opacity 200ms linear; transition: opacity 200ms linear; } 

If I explained it correctly that should let you have a fading background image button, hope it helps at least!

You can use pseudo element to get the effect you want like I did in that Fiddle.

CSS:

.title a { display: block; width: 340px; height: 338px; color: black; position: relative; } .title a:after { background: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-p1nr1fkWKUo/T0zUp5CLO3I/AAAAAAAAAWg/jDiQ0cUBuKA/s800/red-pattern.png) repeat; content: ""; opacity: 0; width: inherit; height: inherit; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; /* TRANSISITION */ transition: opacity 1s ease-in-out; -webkit-transition: opacity 1s ease-in-out; -moz-transition: opacity 1s ease-in-out; -o-transition: opacity 1s ease-in-out; } .title a:hover:after{ opacity: 1; } 

HTML:

<div class="title"> <a href="#">HYPERLINK</a> </div> 

Considering background-images can't be animated, I created a little SCSS mixin allowing to transition between 2 different background-images using pseudo selectors before and after. They are at different z-index layers. The one that is ahead starts with opacity 0 and becomes visible with hover.

You can use it the same approach for creating animations with linear-gradients too.

scss

@mixin bkg-img-transition( $bkg1, $bkg2, $transTime:0.5s ){ position: relative; z-index: 100; &:before, &:after { background-size: cover; content: ''; display: block; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; transition: opacity $transTime; } &:before { z-index: -101; background-image: url("#{$bkg1}"); } &:after { z-index: -100; opacity: 0; background-image: url("#{$bkg2}"); } &:hover { &:after{ opacity: 1; } } } 

Now you can simply use it with

@include bkg-img-transition("https://picsum.photos/300/300/?random","https://picsum.photos/g/300/300"); 

You can check it out here: https://jsfiddle.net/pablosgpacheco/01rmg0qL/

If you can use jQuery, you can try BgSwitcher plugin to switch the background-image with effects, it's very easy to use.

For example :

$('.bgSwitch').bgswitcher({ images: ["style/img/bg0.jpg","style/img/bg1.jpg","style/img/bg2.jpg"], effect: "fade", interval: 10000 }); 

And add your own effect, see adding an effect types

Try this, will make the background animated worked on web but hybrid mobile app not working

@-webkit-keyframes breath { 0% { background-size: 110% auto; } 50% { background-size: 140% auto; } 100% { background-size: 110% auto; } } body { -webkit-animation: breath 15s linear infinite; background-image: url(images/login.png); background-size: cover; } 

If animating opacity is not an option, you can also animate background-size.

For example, I used this CSS to set a backgound-image with a delay.

.before { background-size: 0; } .after { transition: background 0.1s step-end; background-image: $path-to-image; background-size: 20px 20px; } 

Salam, this answer works only in Chrome, cause IE and FF support color transition.

There is no need to make your HTML elements opacity:0, cause some times they contain text, and no need to double your elements!.

The question with link to an example in jsfiddle needed a small change, that is to put an empty image in .title a like background:url(link to an empty image); same as you put it in .title a:hover but make it empty image, and the code will work.

.title a { display: block; width: 340px; height: 338px; color: black; background: url(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Empty.png) repeat; /* TRANSISITION */ transition: background 1s; -webkit-transition: background 1s; -moz-transition: background 1s; -o-transition: background 1s; } .title a:hover{ background: transparent; background: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-p1nr1fkWKUo/T0zUp5CLO3I/AAAAAAAAAWg/jDiQ0cUBuKA/s800/red-pattern.png) repeat; /* TRANSISITION */ transition: background 1s; -webkit-transition: background 1s; -moz-transition: background 1s; -o-transition: background 1s; } 

Check this out https://jsfiddle.net/Tobasi/vv8q9hum/

With Chris's inspiring post here:

https://css-tricks.com/different-transitions-for-hover-on-hover-off/

I managed to come up with this:

#banner { display:block; width:100%; background-repeat:no-repeat; background-position:center bottom; background-image:url(../images/image1.jpg); /* HOVER OFF */ @include transition(background-image 0.5s ease-in-out); &:hover { background-image:url(../images/image2.jpg); /* HOVER ON */ @include transition(background-image 0.5s ease-in-out); } } 

This can be achieved with greater cross-browser support than the accepted answer by using pseudo-elements as exemplified by this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/19818268/2602816

I was struggling with this for a bit, I first used a stack of images on top of each other and every three seconds, I was trying to animate to the next image in the stack and throwing the current image to the bottom of the stack. At the same time I was using animations as shown above. I couldn't get it to work for the life of me.

You can use this library which allows for **dynamically-resized, slideshow-capable background image ** using jquery-backstretch.

https://github.com/jquery-backstretch/jquery-backstretch