instruction text visible/hidden

[rogers]

Hello,

I have an instruction text to the user which I want to make hidden or visible at the appropiate circumstances. Since the instruction is not a user entry field, how do I refer to the instruction text and make hidden or visible?

Thanks

[Khalid Ali]

please rephrase your question.

[rogers]

Hi Khalid,

In a form, I am providing an instruction to the user such as "To delete a row, please click on the checkbox and click on the delete button".


I want to be able to make that text hidden or visible.

How do I do that?

If it was a form field, I would do something like:

document.form.field.style.visible = "hidden"


But this is not a field, it is simply a text string.
Is there a way to refer to that string?

Thanks

[AdamGundry]

I think you need to assign an id to the element containing the text, for example:

<div id="instructionText">This is some text which will appear and disappear.</div>

You can then refer to it using document.getElementById, like this:

document.getElementById('instructionText').style.visible = "hidden"

Adam

[rogers]

Adam,

How do initially make it hidden, when the form first appears?

[AdamGundry]

Using CSS:

<div id="instructionText" style="visibility: hidden">

Adam

P.S. Just noticed that in my previous example, it should be "visbility" not "visible".

[rogers]

Adam,

That looks good. Thanks.

Suppose a user enter a value in a form field.

How do I get the number of character user entered into that field? The field is 2 character in length and I want to check if the user entered 2 character. If user entered only 1 character, I want to used alert().

[AdamGundry]

You can use String.length, for example:

var myStr = 'a';
if (myStr.length != 2){
alert('You must enter 2 characters!');
}

Adam

[rogers]

Here is what I tried but did not work.


var astr;

astr = document.formname.fieldname.value;

document.write("len = " + astr.lengh);


I got "len is undefined", even though the field had 1 character in it.

[AdamGundry]

You missed out the t:

document.write("len = " + astr.length);

Adam

[rogers]

Adam,

The instruction text is not becoming visible and I am getting the following error:

document.fundingform.instructionText.style is null or not an object.

Here is what I have in the form:

<div id="instructionText" style="visibility:hidden">To delete a row from the table below, check the box and click delete button.</div>


Then in the javascript function I have:


var numrows = document.getElementById("tableID").rows.length;

if (numrows == 0)
{ document.fundingform.instructionText.style.visibility="hidden";
}
else
{ document.fundingform.instructionText.style.visibility="visible";
}


Thanks

[AdamGundry]

This is not a form field, so in place of

document.fundingform.instructionText.

you need to use

document.getElementById('instructionText').

Adam

[rogers]

Adam,

Everything works fine :)

Thanks for your help.