Need help with changing z-index with jquery in the case of a slide webspage..

Need help with changing z-index with jquery in the case of a slide webspage..

I am desperate to solve an issue with z-index. If you look at one of my examples:
http://outermotions.com/index-7.php
I am trying to make a website where I have button (menu) and when clicked they slide out a page form the right. The site never changes the whole page it just slides in new content on nav click. This page works well in some aspects. each button slides out a page like I want. One problem is that I want the content to slide out from under part of the background picture and to see all of the content I’d like to mouseover the content and it comes above the bit of picture. If you click on page (portfolio) it does this. Whats funny is this whole concept works in IE (believe it or not) but not in the other browsers. What seems to happen is the z-index’s wont let the mouseovers take affect. I’d like to change the z-index when button clicked so the active content is always on top.
I’m newbie with jquery, sorry….
The second issue is I’d like to close the open content when opening another content page. I have no idea how to do that in this slider case.
I would greatly appreciate any ideas or examples.





btw  (I didnt write the slide function and would not have used <button> but not sure how to make it work from any link, I have tried dozens of different ways to do all this but nothing has worked)