Comments on: Toggling Web Trends..

By: Paul Farnell

Paul Farnell — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 14:47:55 +0000

I’ve used it too, but one of the problems is (especially when used as on that Minimal Web portfolio) when a Google visitor arrives. Google will obviously index the hidden content, but when the visitor gets to the page it’s not visible.

By: Brian Breslin

Brian Breslin — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 15:01:46 +0000

funny how i posted something about this on stylegala a week ago, asking for help w/this same trick, and now everyone is talking about it… interestingly i still need help…

By: Marc Bernstein

Marc Bernstein — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 15:35:38 +0000

Paul: what was your problem, maybe someone here can help you find a solution.

Brian: Interesting observation Brian, I never thought about that.

By: Brian Breslin

Brian Breslin — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:49:53 +0000

I’ll have to submit my link once my project goes live with this technique, maybe you can update the post with a link to it.

just trying to hack apart the IE bugs in my layout now..

By: Andrew Faulkner

Andrew Faulkner — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 17:02:44 +0000

Although I’m not a fan of this hidden content, the ‘latest blogs’ section here uses this technique nicely:

http://www.forgetfoo.com/

By: Kees Huyser

Kees Huyser — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 23:59:24 +0000

I’ve used something similar on my site’s navigation to show some information about the link but it was done in CSS, not in Javascript.

Basically you set a span display:none and on hover you set display to block.

See http://www.huyser.net/

By: Andrew Faulkner

Andrew Faulkner — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:41:47 +0000

That’s really interesting, Kees. Does this method work across browsers? Including certain awkward ones? ;)

By: Kees Huyser

Kees Huyser — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 15:06:32 +0000

Andrew: It works cross-brower; at least I’ve tried it in Safari, FireFox and (win) IE6.

I figure that if those browers work I’ve got 99.3% of the online population covered…

Voice browers I haven’t tried, but I think they will just speak the comment in the span; “about; rumours and facts”.

If you have acces to ‘akward’ browsers, could you try the site and report back on wether it works? t.i.a.

By: tekp

tekp — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:45:50 +0000

I’m not one to be rude, but have you missed a closing bracket in your Javascript?

I use it in forms mainly, for instance: I have a element to choose the subject of a message, and one choice is ‘Other’, when this is selected a textbox appears to the right, with the words, ‘please elaborate’ to the side. It’s small things like this that make forms more interesting for me.

By: Marc Bernstein

Marc Bernstein — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:01:59 +0000

@tekp Thanks, I noticed that too.. but I can’t edit a post after it’s been published :(

By: jono-san

jono-san — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 04:51:39 +0000

Kees’ solution can also be used to make pure CSS popup menus.
The complete code for the javascript is:
in the head:

javascript:
function toggle(yourID){
if (document.getElementById(yourID).style.display == ‘none’) {
document.getElementById(yourID).style.display = ”;
} else {
document.getElementById(yourID).style.display = ‘none’;
}
}

in the body:
toggle