I found that the firefox 'problem' is because a should have display:table-row. IE's glitch seems right since its glitches become interpreted as standard behavior.
So the best solution is use addClass("someClass") and removeClass("someClass") to make things hidden. (with a CSS rule: someClass {display:none;})
This has the drawback of not being animated. My solution could handle that. If not you can script in the css('display','table-row') somehow.
-Clint