[Textbook-l] Re: disappearing/reappearing column-side notes

Sat Aug 9 01:26:42 UTC 2003

Karl Wick saith:
> Here is a technical question: in the same way that the
> table of contents feature can be opened and collapsed with
> a click  apparently wihout reloading the whole page (which
> IMHO is a very cool feature !), could we have collapseable
> notes for the edge of a document ? 

We can easily use the same (or almost the same) code for hiding/showing
sidenotes as we already do for hiding/showing the table of contents.
I made a sample at

  http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/a/a2/Sidenote.html

with JavaScript code based on the wikibits.js ToC code. The changes
are to allow the ToC/note functions to operate on any ID, not tocinside,
and for the default to be hidden notes. (Hmm...one could add another
feature that allows selectable default...another parameter...and
then showTocToggle(...) could be showNoteToggle(..., 'tocinside',
true)...)

The code requires a simple one-row floating table, with one cell being
display: hidden and having an ID, and the other cell calling
showNoteToggle() instead of showTocToggle() with parameters "Show",
"Hide", and the first cell's ID. I'm sure if one really wanted that
one could use a floating div within a floating div so the [hide]
link looks like a section [edit] link and doesn't take up vertical
space.

How to put this in Wikipedia code: maybe use a <sidenote> tag.
<sidenote id="x">text</sidenote> expands to <table class="sidenote">
<tr> <td id="x" style="display: none; width: 300px;">text</td>
<td><script>showTocToggle('Show', 'Hide', 'x'</script></td> </tr></table>.
I don't know PHP, else I would have helped add this to the Wikipedia source.

The sample page has been tested in Mozilla 1.4 and Internet Explorer 6.0.
It fails in Opera 6.0 - but so does the ToC.

=====
-Geoffrey Thomas
geoffreyerffoeg at yahoo.com

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