CSS - Display

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 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.

CSS Visibility Example

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

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 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:

CSS display Inline Example

The following example displays span elements as block elements:

CSS display Block Example

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.

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