jquery + form fields

jquery + form fields

hi,

I have a form and I used jquery to just display the result message(kind of thanks message) to avoid the page refresh. Everything works fine. I would like to do two things after the form is submitted.

I am new to jquery and I wrote the code after checking out some sample examples.

After submitting the form, I want to
1) Reset the form as I do not want user to resubmit it again with the same data. I found how to reset the text fields but not able to do text area.
2) After the form is reset and if they type new content and hit submit then I want to animate the thanks message. Right now what happens is, if they try to submit it for the second time, the message just stays there and we cannot even tell if it is submitted, so I want to just do some animation(like fade in..) to just show that its submitted.

I have the validaiton using plain js and i am submitting the form to the same php file and store the data. I am providing the jquery wich I used to show the message after form submission.
   $.ajax({
         type: "POST",
         data: "fname="+ fname + "& email=" + email + "& comments=" + comments,
         success: function(del){
            $('div.error').hide(); //hiding the error messages
            $('div.success').fadeIn();//showingthe success message
            $('form :input[@type=text]').val("");//resetting the text fields.
         }
      });