I have a form that submits a message to the server and the server echos it back in an HTML div in which response is added to the page in the .message div.  I can make the .message div basically jump into place with

1. $(function() {
       $('#myForm').ajaxForm({                         
           target: '.message',                         
           success: function() {                       
               $('.message').slideDown('5000');        
           }
           });
   });
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

however I would like this message to just slide gracefully into view. Using slideDown, show(slow) and fadeIn do not see to work as expected it still just jumps into view. So I went with animate which works somewhat but only at the end of the width using the following code:

1. $(function() {
       $('#myForm').ajaxForm({                       
   
   
2.         target: '.message',                        
           success: function() {                       
               $('.message').hide();
               $('.message').animate({opacity:100,width:'88%',height:'100%'},3000);    
           }
           });
   });
   
   
   
   
   
   

How can I get the response to gracefully show up and gracefully go away when the person clicks to return to the form?