.delay() and .setTimeout()

Question

According to jQuery document on .delay(),

The .delay() method is best for delaying between queued jQuery effects. Because it is limited

Answer 1

Another side effect of delay(): it seems to disable the ability to hide (or fadeOut, etc) the objecting being delayed, until the delay is over.

For example, I set up the following code (perhaps a stackoverflow developer will recognize the css names....) to hide a 'div':

 $j(document).ready(function(){
   var $messageDiv = $j("
").addClass('fading_message')
       .text("my alert message here").hide();
   var $closeSpan = $j("").addClass('notify_close').text("x");
   $closeSpan.click(function() {$j(this).parent().slideUp(400);});
   $messageDiv.append($closeSpan);
   $j('.content_wrapper_div').prepend($messageDiv);
   $messageDiv.fadeTo(500, .9).delay(5000).fadeTo(800,0);
 });

Clicking the "x" that's in the span (that's in the 'div') did fire off the click function (I tested with an alert in there), but the div didn't slideUp as directed. However, If I replace the last line with this:

     $messageDiv.fadeTo(500, .9);

..then it did work - when I clicked the "x", the surrounding div slideUp and and away. It seems as if the background running of the "delay()" function on the $messageDiv "locked" that object, so that a separate mechanism trying to close it couldn't do so until the delay was done.