jQuery Tabs with Animations

Question

I have a jQuery tab section - and I want to animate the panels within it. Below is the code. I basically want to make the "vertical-tabstrip-visible-content" a sliding panel - such that as each link is clicked, it will close the existing panels and slide the correct, corrosponding one into view.

Any ideas how this could be achieved using jQuery? (I'm already using jQuery UI tabs for the tabbing effect).

   <div id="tabstrip" class="vertical-tabstrip" >
    <ul class="vertical-tabstrip-tabs">
     <li><a href="#vid-1">Tab 1</a></li>
     <li><a href="#vid-2">Tab 2</a></li>
     <li><a href="#vid-3">Tab 3</a></li>           
    </ul>
    <div class="vertical-tabstrip-visible-content-container" id="vid-1"><div class="vertical-tabstrip-visible-content">Content 1</div></div>
    <div class="vertical-tabstrip-visible-content-container" id="vid-2"><div class="vertical-tabstrip-visible-content">Content 2</div></div>
    <div class="vertical-tabstrip-visible-content-container" id="vid-3"><div class="vertical-tabstrip-visible-content">Content 3</div></div>     
</div>

/**********************************************************
 jQUERY UI TABSTRIP
***********************************************************/

.ui-tabs .ui-tabs-hide {
     display: none;
}

.ui-tabs a {

}
.ui-tabs-selected a {
    border-style: none;
    border-color: inherit;
    border-width: 0;
    background: url('../../images/demo-config-on.gif') no-repeat right 50% #f8a230;
    padding-right:18px;  color:#fff;  margin-right:-10px;  margin-bottom: 0px;
}

/**********************************************************
 HORIZONTAL TABSTRIP
***********************************************************/

.vertical-tabstrip {
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
}

.vertical-tabstrip-tabs {
    float: left;
    width: 260px; 
    margin: 0px;
    background: #000;
}

.vertical-tabstrip-tabs li {
    text-align: left;
    list-style: none;
    font-size: 11px;
    padding: 0 0 0 10px;
    margin: 3px 0;
}
.vertical-tabstrip-tabs li a:link,
.vertical-tabstrip-tabs li a:visited {
    display:block; padding:1px 8px 4px;
}

* html .vertical-tabstrip-tabs li a:link,
* html .vertical-tabstrip-tabs li a:visited {
     padding:1px 8px 2px;
}

.vertical-tabstrip-tabs li a:hover,
.vertical-tabstrip-tabs li a:active {
    background-color:#f8a230
}

.vertical-tabstrip-visible-content-container {
    padding: 3px 0 0 10px;
    display: table-cell;
    height: 100%;
}
.vertical-tabstrip-visible-content {
    display: table-cell;
    padding: 0px 0px 15px;
    background: #aaa;
}

Answer 1

The solution was to use the fx: feature within jquery.

 $('#tabstrip').tabs({ fx: { width: 'show', duration: 'slow'} });

Still, I am very confused about what can be passed through this function. If anyone has ideas, I would love to know!

Answer 2

Have you looked at the LocalScroll plugin?