Can jQuery's .animate() method be made to affect variables, rather than CSS properties?
<p>I started writing some JS code to cause a variables value to increase over time, up to a target value, with some form of 'ease-in'.</p>

<p>I realised that jquery already does this in it's .animate() method.  Of course, the method is for manipulating CSS properties, not general variables.</p>

<p>My question is, is there anything that can be done to hack it so that the method affects a variable, rather than a CSS property?</p>
