Web design - show/hide content - know any good examples? Looking for design, not code

I'd like a web designer to style (in CSS) shown/hidden content on our new website. But I'm having trouble finding good examples. Can anyone point to any sites that will hide a bunch of content, and reveal it with a button, and do it really well? For example, how do you show the user that the content, currently shown, can be hidden? Could you put it in a box? Put a vertical line along the left? What should the show/hide icon look like? Would it be next to a text label? Should that label look like a heading? Please not that I'm not after code examples. I know we'll need javascript to make it work, and all Google returns is code examples, so my only option (other than MeFi) is to trawl random sites in the hope they have some hideable content. Thanks.
Answer:

You're asking for "design patterns" about progressive disclosure. you may find a few patterns useful: http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/navigation/accordion.html http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa511487.aspx#patterns http://quince.infragistics.com/Patterns/Closable%20Panels.aspx http://www.useit.com/alertbox/progressive-disclosure.html http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/richinteraction/transition/expand.html You might also find the http://ux.stackexchange.com/ useful for discussions of "UX" or user experience, without all that nasty code. :-)

fonetik at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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Other answers

The most common UI I've seen puts an arrow icon that can be rotated to show/hide content. See this example from http://jqueryui.com/demos/accordion/.

Paragon

What paragon said. If the accordion in jQuery UI doesn't work (for example, if you need multiple bits open at once), the show/hide code at the bottom of the UI Accordion demo is champion. A +/- pair or rotating arrow works really well. You might also consider a hover state on the element that will show/hide to indicate to the user that the element is a clickable item.

fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit

A lot of forums do this pretty well. Here's an extremely nerdy example: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=364252 You need to scroll down about two screenfuls before you'll see it. I like the elegance of the box with the slightly different background colour and the simple "show/hide" html form button.

It sounds like you're looking more for UI / design ideas than code ideas. For that kind of thing, I turn to http://dribbble.com. Lots of design snippets, some linked to live projects and some not. Try searching for "accordion", "content", and maybe even "read more".

geeky

Thanks all, this has given me some useful leads. Much appreciated.

fonetik

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