Here is a quick trick for getting an effect to delay without using setTimeout. Let's say, for example, that I want to show an alert message on the page every time a user clicks on a certain button. But I don't want it to stay there forever; I want it to go away a few seconds later. You know, like the way they do in all of those crazy Web 2.0 sites. Update In version 1.4, jQuery introduced a .delay