How can I make visible an invisible control with jquery? (hide and show not work)

Here's some code I use to deal with this.

First we show the element, which will typically set the display type to "block" via .show() function, and then set the CSS rule to "visible":

jQuery( '.element' ).show().css( 'visibility', 'visible' );

Or, assuming that the class that is hiding the element is called hidden, such as in Twitter Bootstrap, toggleClass() can be useful:

jQuery( '.element' ).toggleClass( 'hidden' );

Lastly, if you want to chain functions, perhaps with fancy with a fading effect, you can do it like so:

jQuery( '.element' ).css( 'visibility', 'visible' ).fadeIn( 5000 );

You can't do this with jQuery, visible="false" in asp.net means the control isn't rendered into the page. If you want the control to go to the client, you need to do style="display: none;" so it's actually in the HTML, otherwise there's literally nothing for the client to show, since the element wasn't in the HTML your server sent.

If you remove the visible attribute and add the style attribute you can then use jQuery to show it, like this:

$("#elementID").show();

Old Answer (before patrick's catch)

To change visibility, you need to use .css(), like this:

$("#elem").css('visibility', 'visible');

Unless you need to have the element occupy page space though, use display: none; instead of visibility: hidden; in your CSS, then just do:

$("#elem").show();

The .show() and .hide() functions deal with display instead of visibility, like most of the jQuery functions :)


.show() and .hide() modify the css display rule. I think you want:

$(selector).css('visibility', 'hidden'); // Hide element
$(selector).css('visibility', 'visible'); // Show element