Animates all spans (words in this case) to hide fastly, completing each animation within 200 milliseconds. Once each animation is done, it starts the next one.

Edit code and click me	Your Result (Some examples do not work in Google Chrome):
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script> <script> $(document).ready(function(){ $("#hidr").click(function () { $("span:last-child").hide("fast", function () { // use callee so don't have to name the function $(this).prev().hide("fast", arguments.callee); }); }); $("#showr").click(function () { $("span").show(2000); }); }); </script> <style> span { background:#def3ca; padding:3px; float:left; } </style> </head> <body> <button id="hidr">Hide</button> <button id="showr">Show</button> <div> <span>Once</span> <span>upon</span> <span>a</span> <span>time</span> <span>there</span> <span>were</span> <span>three</span> <span>programmers...</span> </div> </body> </html>
Edit the code above and click to see the result	www.xhtml.co.il - Try it yourself