I've used jQuery plugins before, but I am still a beginner with javascript and have a difficult time writing anything from scratch.

I'm working on a page that has a div with an image background. Underneath it is a ul that contains a navbar (css sprites) that, when clicked, should swap the image background of the div above (with a fade). To complicate matters, I need to have the image div automatically cycling though the images until the user clicks a nav button to go to a specific slide.

I've found a lot of prerolled jquery image galleries that almost do something like this, but nothing close enough to what I need to try adapting it. 

Can anyone point me in the right direction for writing something myself ?