How to darken a DIV surrounding using JQuery (lightbox-like, but no pop-up)?

Question

I want the user to focus on a part of the screen at a given time. The idea is to fade everything on the Web page but the required DIV, so the user will be invited to work in this area.

The effect I am looking for looks like a lot a lightbox, except there is no pop up, and no content is loaded, the only changing thing is the look and feels (and the reponse to a clic, of course).

I thought inline lightbox would be the anwser, but it's not.

I'm working with JQuery, although any solution is appreciated, plugins, hand crafted snippets, hugs, goat sacrifices, whatever...

Answer 1

As luck would have it, I stumbled across this the other day:

http://flowplayer.org/tools/demos/toolbox/expose/index.html

Looks like it might be the effect you are after.

Answer 2

Take a look at jQuery Tools' expose

Answer 3

The above links are broken now, here's the new one if anyone finds this: http://jquerytools.org/documentation/toolbox/expose.html

Answer 4

If you want interaction with the rest of the page blocked, check out the blockUI plugin.