HTML/CSS Help.

Deleted User 234324 · 21 Feb 2008 at 09:47

Hiya,

Just been thinking about different things I can do to make our site a little more user friendly and thaught about possibly adding in a new feature to help with displaying large blocks of text. Basically what I wanted to do was have numerous options/questions displayed and when the user clicks on one of those questions or options, it drops down a text box below the question showing the answer or text.

Any idea how i would go about this or even what its called so i can maybe google it

Any assistance appreciated.

unwashed potato! · 21 Feb 2008 at 11:05

best bet would be to use javascript, have the text in a div that is hidden, and then when the user clicks the question/option, javascript will change the div style so it is shown in the space, and then if they change option again, javascript will again unhide the option selected, and rehide the one currently shown.

thats your best bet imo or you could try doing it with php though this wont be as good as it will require a page reload so if the site is small enough might aswell be done with standard html
good luck

radderfire · 21 Feb 2008 at 11:09

Having the text hidden initially is bad for usability anyway, so I probably wouldn't do this.

unwashed potato! · 21 Feb 2008 at 11:21

radderfire said:
Having the text hidden initially is bad for usability anyway, so I probably wouldn't do this.

why is it bad?

adamph · 21 Feb 2008 at 12:01

Mammalian said:
why is it bad?

Because if you don't have javascript turned on, you will never be able to get the text back.

Best better is to have the text on by default and have the javascript hide it on the body load

unwashed potato! · 21 Feb 2008 at 12:22

adamph said:
Because if you don't have javascript turned on, you will never be able to get the text back.

Best better is to have the text on by default and have the javascript hide it on the body load

ahh very true, radderfire should have explained this though.

Deleted User 234324 · 21 Feb 2008 at 21:29

Any examples of this sort of thing in action as I still dont quiet understand how it would function, tell you why i thaught of something like this, the page i wish to implement it on is at present just a giant wall of text, and i would like to break it down into headers/questions that when clicked on reveal the answer. rather than a user have to scroll down for ages to find the text they want.

blade007 · 21 Feb 2008 at 21:45

vidahost use this on their site, the exact same thing .. looks like a few lines of javascript does it

have a look http://www.vidahost.com/reseller_hosting.php

(well, he did ask, and I ain't got another example!)

Deleted User 234324 · 21 Feb 2008 at 21:55

blade007 said:
vidahost use this on their site, the exact same thing .. looks like a few lines of javascript does it

have a look http://www.vidahost.com/reseller_hosting.php

(well, he did ask, and I ain't got another example!)

Perfect exactly what I was after, i'd buy you a pint if I knew you irl. You've just saved me hours of messing about.

blade007 · 21 Feb 2008 at 23:16

cheers man. hope it helps you out