[html] How do you create a hidden div that doesn't create a line break or horizontal space?

I want to have a hidden checkbox that doesn't take up any space on the screen.

If I have this:

<div id="divCheckbox" style="visibility: hidden">

I don't see the checkbox, but it still creates a new line.

If I have this:

<div id="divCheckbox" style="visibility: hidden; display:inline;">

it no longer creates a new line, but it takes up horizontal space on the screen.

Is there a way to have a hidden div that takes up no room (vertical or horizontal?

This question is related to html hidden

The answer is


To hide the element visually, but keep it in the html, you can use:

<div style='visibility:hidden; overflow:hidden; height:0; width:0;'>
  [content]
</div>

or

<div style='visibility:hidden; overflow:hidden; position:absolute;'>
  [content]
</div>

What may go wrong with display:none? It removes the element completely from the html, so some functionalities may be broken if they need to access something in the hidden element.


Use style="display: none;". Also, you probably don't need to have the DIV, just setting the style to display: none on the checkbox would probably be sufficient.


Since you should focus on usability and generalities in CSS, rather than use an id to point to a specific layout element (which results in huge or multiple css files) you should probably instead use a true class in your linked .css file:

.hidden {
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}

or for the minimalist:

.hidden {
display: none;
}

Now you can simply apply it via:

<div class="hidden"> content </div>

Since the release of HTML5 one can now simply do:

<div hidden>This div is hidden</div>

Note: This is not supported by some old browsers, most notably IE < 11.

Hidden Attribute Documentation (MDN,W3C)


In addition to CMS´ answer you may want to consider putting the style in an external stylesheet and assign the style to the id, like this:

#divCheckbox {
display: none;
}

To prevent the checkbox from taking up any space without removing it from the DOM, use hidden.

<div hidden id="divCheckbox">

To prevent the checkbox from taking up any space and also removing it from the DOM, use display: none.

<div id="divCheckbox" style="display:none">

_x000D_
_x000D_
display: none;
_x000D_
_x000D_
_x000D_

This should make the element disappear and not take up any space.


Consider using <span> to isolate small segments of markup to be styled without breaking up layout. This would seem to be more idiomatic than trying to force a <div> not to display itself--if in fact the checkbox itself cannot be styled in the way you want.


Show / hide by mouse click:

<script language="javascript">

    function toggle() {

        var ele = document.getElementById("toggleText");
        var text = document.getElementById("displayText");

        if (ele.style.display == "block") {

            ele.style.display = "none";
            text.innerHTML = "show";
        }
        else {

            ele.style.display = "block";
            text.innerHTML = "hide";
        }
    }
</script>

<a id="displayText" href="javascript:toggle();">show</a> <== click Here

<div id="toggleText" style="display: none"><h1>peek-a-boo</h1></div>

Source: Here