What I need:
An animated rotation (revolution) of a background image by an arbitrary amount of degrees. Ideally the animation is activated on the call-back of another animation.
What I have:
A container div with a background image that contains additional divs (only the image is required to rotate and not the div or div content).
Terminological confusion:
In jQuery, the word "rotate" seems to mean cyclically interchange. My definition of "rotate", for the purposes of this thread, refers to the two dimensional revolution by degrees of an object using the z-plane as a central axis. The terminological overlap makes it difficult to research this matter using search engines.
Disappointment:
I expected something as basic as the animated rotation (revolution) of an image or background image to be a standard requirement and therefore a default functionality of jQuery. Instead, the best I can find is a jquery-rotate plugin that doesn't highlight obvious support for background-images and what it does support, isn't even cross-browser friendly.
EDIT: The jquery-rotate plugin supports IE6+ and other older browsers by falling back to CANVAS and VML for standard objects though I'm as of yet uncertain as to what the support is for background-images.
Cross-browser:
Cross-browser support is essential. For this reason, CSS alternatives or jQuery/CSS hybrid alternatives will not meet my requirements. A minimum of IE6+ support is acceptable.
My question:
Am I overlooking obvious solutions or is jQuery not able to animate the rotation (revolution) of a background image despite being able to achieve far more complex feats?