CSS Display and Visibility

The display property specifies if/how an element is displayed, and the visibility property specifies if an element should be visible or hidden.

Box 1

Box 2

Box 3

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.

Example

h1.hidden {visibility:hidden;}

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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 the element is not there:

Example

h1.hidden {display:none;}

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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:

Example

li {display:inline;}

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The following example displays span elements as block elements:

Example

span {display:block;}

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Note: Changing the display type of an element changes only how the element is displayed, NOT what kind of element it is. For example: An inline element set to display:block is not allowed to have a block element nested inside of it.

More Examples

How to display an element as an inline element.
This example demonstrates how to display an element as an inline element.

How to display an element as a block element
This example demonstrates how to display an element as a block element.

How to make a table element collapse
This example demonstrates how to make a table element collapse.

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