The display property specifies if/how an element is displayed, and the visibility property specifies if an element should be visible or hidden.
Hiding an Element – display:none or visibility:hidden
Hiding an element can be done by setting the display property to “none” or the visibility property to “hidden”. However, notice that these two methods produce different results:
visibility:hidden hides an element, but it will still take up the same space as before. The element will be hidden, but still affect the layout.
display:none hides an element, and it will not take up any space. The element will be hidden, and the page will be displayed as if the element is not there:
CSS Display – Block and Inline Elements
A block element is an element that takes up the full width available, and has a line break before and after it.
Examples of block elements:
- <h1>
- <p>
- <div>
An inline element only takes up as much width as necessary, and does not force line breaks.
Examples of inline elements:
- <span>
- <a>
Changing How an Element is Displayed
Changing an inline element to a block element, or vice versa, can be useful for making the page look a specific way, and still follow web standards.
The following example displays list items as inline elements:
The following example displays span elements as block elements:
| Note: Setting the display property of an element only changes how the element is displayed, NOT what kind of element it is. So, an inline element with display:block is not allowed to have other block elements inside of it. |