How to retain the space of the td after hidding it in Jquery

If you use the following code snippet to hide and show tds- the UI will get disturbed.
The next corresponding td will get shifted to the hidden td space.
  var tablevar="#"+myTable;
 $(tablevar+' tr:eq('+i+')').find('td:eq(3)').show();
   $(tablevar+' tr:eq('+i+')').find('td:eq(2)').show();

So how to retain the td space and still achieve the functionality.
use the this code snippet.
  var tablevar="#"+myTable;
$(tablevar+' tr:eq('+i+')').find('td:eq(3)').css("visibility", "hidden");
 $(tablevar+' tr:eq('+i+')').find('td:eq(2)').css("visibility", "hidden");

 $(tablevar+' tr:eq('+i+')').find('td:eq(4)').css("visibility", "visible");