JS degrade nicely plus transition issues - scrolling slides

I’m trying to create a javscript scroller following the example at: http://www.deadmarshes.com/Blog/jQuery+Slideshow+with+Crossfade.html

Unfortunately this version doesn’t show anything when javascript is disabled but I’d like it to at least show the first image and caption and then just not move.

I stuck together a fiddle

Does anyone know how to make the initial transition not happen and just have the first ‘slide’ there?

Also I adapted this slightly to show 4 slides instead of 3. I changed 3 to 4 in two places in the JS (where it’s keeping tally) and that seemed to work alright but now in FF when you click on a few of the numbers to change slides a few times then let it go back to normal running, the indicator which is meant to show which slide you’re on starts appearing all over the place. The timing of the transitions also goes weird. It’s like clicking a couple of times means the transitions and the pointers are going a couple of times. IE there’s more than one bit of JS moving the slides and pointers, resulting in strangly timed transitions and more than one pointer. Could that be possible?

I assume that’s to do with the way it’s being counted in the JS but I haven’t a clue what it’s doing to be honest.

Any help would be appreciated.

Yes, any time I use a slideshow I make sure it can work nicely with JS off. If it requires hacking, though, I just move on to a better one. Some I like include AnythingSlider, BXSlider and WOW Slider. For the first two, you can just add a couple of CSS fallbacks to make them scroll nicely if JS s off. WOW slider comes with CSS fallbacks out of the box, including CSS3 animations to make the slideshow still run.