Here I will mention how to use the jquery animate function and the usability and flexibility of it.
The syntax of this function is:

$.animate(options, settings, callback);
/* you can replace setting with duration (in milliseconds) or words: ‘slow’, ‘normal’ or ‘fast’.
callback is optional */

Below is a list of popular and most used animation:

increasing/decreasing width and height
moving or scrolling html element
changing opacity
scrolling window

Now let me explain each in an example.

This article is old. Please view 10 top jQuery plugins for images in 2011

I have collected some jQuery image galleries for you to choose your preferred one. Each one is working in different way than the other.
Here is the list of the top 5 jquery image galleries: