CSS content-visibility

By  on  

The CSS language is full of small gaps which are frustrating to navigate. Between CSS properties to hide a container and its contents, there is still room for improvement. visibility: hidden keeps height and width integrity while display: none on a container hides everything. You can use .container > * to hide all contents of a container, but what if there was a better way?

There is a better way to hide the contents of an element while respecting the container's border and dimensions. That better way is using the content-visibility property:

.my-container.contents-loading {
  content-visibility: hidden;
}

A demo of such functionality:

See the Pen Untitled by David Walsh (@darkwing) on CodePen.

Avoiding a .container > * selector by using content-visibility: hidden is so much nicer from a maintenance perspective!

Recent Features

  • By
    I’m an Impostor

    This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write, much less admit to myself.  I've written resignation letters from jobs I've loved, I've ended relationships, I've failed at a host of tasks, and let myself down in my life.  All of those feelings were very...

  • By
    Being a Dev Dad

    I get asked loads of questions every day but I'm always surprised that they're rarely questions about code or even tech -- many of the questions I get are more about non-dev stuff like what my office is like, what software I use, and oftentimes...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Introducing MooTools Dotter

    It's best practice to provide an indicator of some sort when performing an AJAX request or processing that takes place in the background. Since the dawn of AJAX, we've been using colorful spinners and imagery as indicators. While I enjoy those images, I am...

  • By
    prefers-color-scheme: CSS Media Query

    One device and app feature I've come to appreciate is the ability to change between light and dark modes. If you've ever done late night coding or reading, you know how amazing a dark theme can be for preventing eye strain and the headaches that result.

Discussion

  1. Chris Zuber

    I’ve found that it can cause accessibility issues and false problems in Lighthouse reports. But that’s content-visibility: auto.

    For example, I have large white text on a black background in a footer, but I think Chrome doesn’t properly test/paint it/something because it says all text has insufficient contrast ratio (it has a ratio of like 12). Screen readers also seem to be problematic, though I can’t say exactly what’s going on there.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!