JQuery Content Sliders and Formatting

I’m having a bit of trouble trying to implement a slider on my wordpress theme.

The first attempt is located at http://www.pnac.org/development Using Nathan Searles excellent “Slides.” The problem I have is that trying to create a slide with multiple elements causes the slider to fail. I would like the slider to be styled and function similary to http://www.pnac.org/college-home, where the Title, a custom field, and an excerpt are all returned and placed into each slide. The problem with the second link is the “content rewind problem” and the navigation. I can’t make the links be arranged horizontally without it breaking.

Currently, the rough code for Nathan’s Slides operates like this:

<div id="slider">
	<div id="slide_example">
		<div class="slides_container">
			<?php
			$postcount = 0;
			$sliderPosts = new WP_Query('cat=7');
			while ($sliderPosts->have_posts()) : $sliderPosts->the_post();
			$postcount++;
			?>

		<?php if ( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'featured-img', true) ) { ?>
		<div class="entry">
			<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/scripts/timthumb.php?src=<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "featured-img", $single = true); ?>&h=145&w=260&zc=1" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" width="254" height="145" /></a>
			<?php } ?>
		<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
		</div>
		<?php endwhile; ?>

	       </div>
        </div>
</div>

Any help is greatly appreciated.