Jquery easing and animation

Question

I grabbed this compact news reader from here Below is the code for animating the ease in and ease out of the previews as the links are clicked on. I change the dimensions of the whole page from a height of 300 to 600. I did some googling and the animate part of jquery animates a CSS property of the element. So I worked from there. Thought I had things working but I didn't so I thought I would start from scratch again.

Could any one explain this as it reads? For example, and I'm just guessing, "animate page element's top css to -300px... the rest of the line I don't understand.

Thank you for any help, harassment, or pointers.

$current.stop().animate({'top':'-300px'},600,'easeOutBack',function(){
                            $(this).css({'top':'310px'});

sdfadssf

            $items.each(function(i){
                var $item = $(this);
                $item.data('idx',i+1);

                $item.bind('click',function(){
                    var $this       = $(this);
                    $cn_list.find('.selected').removeClass('selected');
                    $this.addClass('selected');
                    var idx         = $(this).data('idx');
                    var $current    = $cn_preview.find('.cn_content:nth-child('+current+')');
                    var $next       = $cn_preview.find('.cn_content:nth-child('+idx+')');

                    if(idx > current){
                        $current.stop().animate({'top':'-300px'},600,'easeOutBack',function(){
                            $(this).css({'top':'310px'});
                        });
                        $next.css({'top':'310px'}).stop().animate({'top':'5px'},600,'easeOutBack');
                    }
                    else if(idx < current){
                        $current.stop().animate({'top':'310px'},600,'easeOutBack',function(){
                            $(this).css({'top':'310px'});
                        });
                        $next.css({'top':'-300px'}).stop().animate({'top':'5px'},600,'easeOutBack');
                    }
                    current = idx;
                });
            });

Answer 1

Ill explain;

$current. //the element you are on
    stop(). //stop all running animations
    animate( //start a new animation
        {'top':'-300px'}, //animate till this element's top style is -300px
        600, //the animation will take 600ms
        'easeOutBack', //it will use the EaseOutBack easing function
        function(){ //callback, that gets called as soon as the animation finishes
            $(this).css({'top':'310px'}); //set the element's top style to 310px
        }
    );

so in other words, this function doesn't do anything very smart. It animates and in the end it jumps to a different place anyway.. regardless, hope I helped :)