jQuery - animating 'left' position of absolutely positioned div when sliding panel is revealed

Question

I have a hidden panel off the left side of the screen which slides into view on the click of a 'tab' positioned on the left side of the screen. I need the panel to slide over the top of the existing page content, and I need the tab to move with it. and so both are absolutely positioned in css. Everything works fine, apart from I need the tab (and thus the tab-container) to move left with the panel when it is revealed, so it appears to be stuck to the right-hand-side of the panel. Its relatively simple when using floats, but of course this affects the layout of the existing content, hence absolute positioning. I have tried animating the left position of the panel-container (see the documented jquery function), but I cant get it to work.

This is an example of the original code which i have changed, how can I get the button/tab to slide aswell?

http://www.iamkreative.co.uk/jquery/slideout_div.html

My HTML

<div><!--sample page content-->
    <p>
        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et 
    </p>
</div>

<div id="panel" class="height"> <!--the hidden panel -->
    <div class="content">
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore</p>
    </div>  
</div>

<!--if javascript is disabled use this link-->
<div id="tab-container" class="height">
    <a href="#" onclick="return()">
        <div id="tab"><!-- this will activate the panel. --></div> 
    </a>
</div>

My jQuery

$(document).ready(function(){

$("#panel, .content").hide(); //hides the panel and content from the user

$('#tab').toggle(function(){ //adding a toggle function to the #tab
    $('#panel').stop().animate({width:"400px", opacity:0.8}, 100, //sliding the #panel to 400px

    // THIS NEXT FUNCTION DOES NOT WORK -->
    function() {
        $('#tab-container').animate({left:"400px"} //400px to match the panel width
        });

    function() {
        $('.content').fadeIn('slow'); //slides the content into view.
        });  
},

function(){ //when the #tab is next cliked
    $('.content').fadeOut('slow', function() { //fade out the content 
        $('#panel').stop().animate({width:"0", opacity:0.1}, 500); //slide the #panel back to a width of 0
    });
   });

  });

and this is the css

#panel {
position:absolute;
left:0px;
top:50px;
background-color:#999999;
height:500px;
display:none;/*hide the panel if Javascript is not running*/
}

#panel .content {
width:290px;
margin-left:30px;
}

#tab-container{
position:absolute;
top:20px;
width:50px;
height:620px;
background:#161616;
}

#tab {
width:50px;
height:150px;
margin-top:100px;
display:block;
cursor:pointer;
background:#DDD;
}

Many thanks

Answer 1

I started again from scratch, and actually read the jQuery docs hehe. I put both the panel and the button in an absolutely positioned div, floating them both left. Gave the container a negative left position, then put a jQuery toggle action on the button.

$('#button').toggle(function() {

    $('#slider').animate({
        left: '+=200'
        }, 458, 'swing', function() {

        // Animation complete. CALLBACK?

    });

}, function() {

    $('#slider').animate({
        left: '-=200'
        }, 458, 'swing', function() {

        // Animation complete. CALLBACK?

    });

});