I want to have a hidden checkbox that doesn't take up any space on the screen.
If I have this:
<div id="divCheckbox" style="visibility: hidden">
I don't see the checkbox, but it still creates a new line.
If I have this:
<div id="divCheckbox" style="visibility: hidden; display:inline;">
it no longer creates a new line, but it takes up horizontal space on the screen.
Is there a way to have a hidden div that takes up no room (vertical or horizontal?
Use display:none;
<div id="divCheckbox" style="display: none;">
visibility: hidden hides the element, but it still takes up space in the layout.
display: none removes the element completely from the document, it doesn't take up any space.
Use style="display: none;". Also, you probably don't need to have the DIV, just setting the style to display: none on the checkbox would probably be sufficient.
In addition to CMS´ answer you may want to consider putting the style in an external stylesheet and assign the style to the id, like this:
#divCheckbox {
display: none;
}
Consider using <span> to isolate small segments of markup to be styled without breaking up layout. This would seem to be more idiomatic than trying to force a <div> not to display itself--if in fact the checkbox itself cannot be styled in the way you want.
To hide the element visually, but keep it in the html, you can use:
<div style='visibility:hidden; overflow:hidden; height:0; width:0;'>
[content]
</div>
or
<div style='visibility:hidden; overflow:hidden; position:absolute;'>
[content]
</div>
What may go wrong with display:none? It removes the element completely from the html, so some functionalities may be broken if they need to access something in the hidden element.