How do I hide an HTML element before the page loads

Question

I have some JQuery code that shows or hides a div.

$("div#extraControls").show();   // OR .hide()

I initially want the div to be not visible so I used:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("div#extraControls").hide();
});

However, on the browser, the content loads visible for a second before disappearing, which is not what I want.

How do I set the hide the element before the page loads whilst keeping the ability to show hide it dynamically with a script?

Answer 1

In CSS:

#extraControls { display: none; }

Or in HTML:

<div id="extraControls" style="display: none;"></div>

Answer 2

div.hidden
{
   display: none
}

<div id="extraControls" class="hidden">
</div>

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("div#extraControls").removeClass("hidden");
});

Answer 3

What you could do is insert a inline script tag at the end of the document, or immediately after the div with id "extraControls". Should be fire a little sooner than.

<div id="extraControls">i want to be invisible!</div>
<script type="text/javascript">$("div#extraControls").hide()</script>

Of course you could do this server-side as well, but maybe there's a good reason you don't want to do that (like, have the controls visible if the browser does NOT support javascript).

Answer 4

Make a css class

.hidden {
display: none;
}

Add this to any element you don't want to be visible when loading the page. Then use $("div#extraControls").show(); to display it again.