interactive popup window type thing?

[ShootingBlanks]

Hello. I'm wondering how to make it so that when a user clicks a link, that link will open a kind of "on-screen popup window" (I say "on-screen" because I want it to sort of overlay the current window contents - and even ideally sort of "fade out" the original page's contents in the background like you may have seen on some sites, but that's not a necessity). The window would have an input box with a "SUBMIT" button that would feed the input text to a database. There would also be a "CANCEL" button to close the popup window. Because the input text would feed to a database, and the database table that it feeds to would be dependent on the link that was clicked to open the popup window, I would need the on-screen link that initiates the popup window to pass a variable to it.

I'm thinking jQuery can accomplish this somehow, but I'm way too novice to get this going on my own, so I'm looking for some startup help. I wouldn't need any help with the database insert code. Just with getting the popup window open and pulling in a variable from a clicked link.

Thanks so much for any help that can be offered to get me going on this!!!