jquery sortable: get list behavior without an <ul>?

This plugin (jQuery UI's Sortable) gives me behavior I prefer if I use a list, but I need divs in order to get the formatting I want. Specifically, with a list it gives me good positioning, and it knows the right direction to shift things out of the way in. Everything works better with a list - except the formatting stuff I need from the CSS.

I know you can use connectWith to modify the sorting behavior, but it's not at all clear to me how. It's also not clear to me if I can modify the "other objects getting out of the way" behavior with some similar option. It works beautifully with a list and is almost worthless with divs.

Also, if you know how to solve my list vs. div formatting problem, I ask开发者_如何学Pythoned another question about that here:

is it even possible to expand a (horizontal) list's background with ajax?