Interesting tidbit: I as looking at the questions on Experts-Exchange for JavaScript. http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/Scripting/JavaScript/
*My discovery:* A big portion of the questions are easy to answer if you use jQuery. One of them turned into a neat demo I whipped up: http://commadot.com/jquery/cyleNumber.php I never thought of using the Cycle plugin for a count-down or count-up, but there it is. :) I think it makes a nice effect. Have a great day. Glen