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 P.S. I wouldn't use jQuery UI for this today, though. It's easy enough to do with CSS.

This was my initial approach, but my needs became too complex to do it simply with CSS. I need to scale in different directions at different times, and sometimes I need an instant show/hide, etc.

When using CSS for effects, the key for it to not get too complex is to apply CSS classes to elements, and write CSS rules for the class(es). 

That's what I was doing. For example, I had a `scaleZeroX` class and a `scaleZeroY` class. But depending on the state of things, I needed to animate the same element in different ways. So now to un-hide the element, I need to make sure it is scaled to zero in the correct axis, AND make sure it is NOT scaled to zero on the wrong axis, and if I just added the class, then I need to wait for the transition to complete, THEN I need to remove the `scaleZero_` class to accomplish the animation I originally wanted.