The online documentation for "slideDown" and "slideUp" says that only the height is affected by those routines. That claim is false: the value of "display" is also changed, and for me that's a problem.
I have a div that's set up with "position: absolute" and "display:inline". I want that box to appear in the layout relative to its surrounding content, and that's the simplest way I know to do that. I also want the box to be animated. I do not, however, want jQuery to touch my "display" value, because setting it to "block" breaks the layout completely. Looking at the (not trivial to understand) code, it *appears* that the original value of the "display" attribute is saved, or rather that the code attempts to save it. However, that's not working for me: my div is definitely display:inline to start off, but a call to "slideUp" or "slideDown" always leaves it either "display: none" or "display: block".