I have a bunch of thumbnails which I am loading with a style of visibility: hidden;
so that they all maintain their correct layouts. Once the page is fully load
<span style="opacity:0;">I'm Hidden</span>
To Show : $('span').fadeTo(1000,1)
To Hide : $('span').fadeTo(1000,0)
The space is preserved in the DOM layout
http://jsfiddle.net/VZwq6/
Try matching for the hidden element?
$(".littleme:hidden").fadeIn();
Cant you use fadeTo(duration, value) instead? Surely this way you can fade to 0 and 1, that way you are not affecting the document flow...
try using opacity and animate()
:
$('.littleme').css('opacity',0).animate({opacity:1}, 1000);
Add a few calls to the chain like this:
$('.littleme').css('visibility','visible').hide().fadeIn('slow');
This will change it to display:none
for 1 frame before fading in, occupying the area again.