Javascript/HTML — Toggle Visibility (Automatically causing one div element to hide when another is rendered visible)

Question

Essentially what I am trying to do is create a website that has all of its content on the home page but only has some of the content visible at any one time. The way I read to do this is through toggling visibility.

The problem I am having is that: Assume the home page, when you first visit the website is blank (the way I want it to be). Lets say you click on the "about us" link. All of a sudden the about us section becomes visible (the way I want it to be). Now the problem that I have come across is when I know lets say click on the "products" link, I want the "products" content to become visible and the "about us" content to become invisible again. (Essentially creating the illusion of opening a new page within the same page)

Here is the code I have come up with so far. I can make certain div elements visible and invisible (onclick) but I cant figure out how to make sure only one div element is visible at any one time.

<script type="text/javascript">
function toggleVisibility() {
document.getElementById("about").style.display = "";
if(document.getElementById("about").style.visibility == "hidden" ) {
    document.getElementById("about").style.visibility = "visible";
}
else {
document.getElementById("about").style.visibility = "hidden";
}
}
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
function toggleVisibility1() {
document.getElementById("products").style.display = "";
if(document.getElementById("products").style.visibility == "hidden" ) {
    document.getElementById("products").style.visibility = "visible";
}
else {
document.getElementById("products").style.visibility = "hidden";
}
}
</script>

The links to make the javascript work looks like this:

< href="#" onclick="toggleVisibility();">About

< href="##" onclick="toggleVisibility1();"> Products

Answer 1

here is another, simple function

<script type="text/javascript">
function toggle_visibility(id) {
   var e = document.getElementById(id);
   if(e.style.display == 'block')
      e.style.display = 'none';
   else
      e.style.display = 'block';
}
</script>
<a href="#" onclick="toggle_visibility('foo');">if you click here, #foo will change visibility</a>
<div id="foo">blablabla</div>

Answer 2

Without jQuery, you would want to do something like this:

<style type="text/css">
    .content {
        display: none;
    }
    #about {
        display: block;
    }
</style>

<script type="text/javascript">

    function toggleVisibility(selectedTab) {

         // Get a list of your content divs
         var content = document.getElementsByClassName('content');

         // Loop through, hiding non-selected divs, and showing selected div
         for(var i=0; i<content.length; i++) {
              if(content[i].id == selectedTab) {
                    content[i].style.display = 'block';
              } else {
                    content[i].style.display = 'none';
              }
         }

    }
</script>

<a href="#" onclick="toggleVisibility('about');">About</a>
<a href="#" onclick="toggleVisibility('products');"> Products</a>

<div id="about" class="content">About stuff here</div>
<div id="products" class="content">Product stuff here</div>

Example here: http://jsfiddle.net/frDLX/

jQuery makes this much easier, but if you are beginning with JavaScript, sometimes you want to see the programmatic code, so you can tell what is going on.

Answer 3

This is exactly what jquery makes easier. Take this very simple example of what you're trying to achieve:

<style type="text/css">
    .section {
        display: none;
    }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">

    function toggleVisibility(newSection) {
        $(".section").not("#" + newSection).hide();
        $("#" + newSection).show();
    }
</script>

<a href="#" onclick="toggleVisibility('about');">About</a>

<a href="#" onclick="toggleVisibility('products');"> Products</a>

<div id="about" class="section">about section</div>
<div id="products" class="section">products section</div>

Answer 4

Simple solution is like this:

    <script type="text/javascript">
    function toggleVisibility(divid) {
    if (divid="about"){
        document.getElementById("about").style.visibility = "visible";
        document.getElementById("products").style.visibility = "hidden";
    }
    else if (divid="products")
    {
        document.getElementById("products").style.visibility = "visible";
        document.getElementById("about").style.visibility = "hidden";
    }
    }
    </script>


< href="#" onclick="toggleVisibility('about');">About

< href="##" onclick="toggleVisibility1('products');"> Products

Answer 5

use CSS display: property

element disappear

document.getElementById("products").style.display = "none";

element appear and is displayed as block (default for div)

document.getElementById("products").style.display = "block";

I posted sample code here: jQuery: menus appear/disappear on click - V2

PS

Here you can find nice examples about differences between display and visibility: http://wiw.org/~frb/css-docs/display/display.html