You'd need a bunch of callbacks to chain the animations in jQuery, plus the cost of including the library. The Smashing Magazine article is not using the short

You'd need a bunch of callbacks to chain the animations in jQuery, plus the cost of including the library. The Smashing Magazine article is not using the shorthand declarations for -webkit-animation, which would compact it much more. Give it a spin, you will be pleasantly surprised, especially when it comes to tiggering the animation (with :hover). You are right that browser coverage is a joke, but support is there in FF Aurora (who knows about IE10).