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I'm making a family tree. The following script allows the user to expand branches of the tree. It works fine, but there must be a better way.

You can see it working here.

$(function(){
    $('.oc').prepend('<img src="icons/bullet_add.png" alt="more" width="16" height="16"/>')
    $("ul[id|=Nested]").hide();
    $("a[id|=trigger_Nested]").click(function() {
        var text = $(this).siblings("ul");
        if (text.is(':hidden')) {
            text.slideDown("fast");
            $(this).next("span").html('<img src="icons/bullet_take.png" alt="close" width="16" height="16" />');     
        } else {
            text.slideUp("fast");
            $(this).next("span").html('<img src="icons/bullet_add.png" alt="more" width="16" height="16" />');     
        }

        return false;
    });
});
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1 Answer 1

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A couple notes:

  1. I would use classes instead of ids for the nested links. I don't know if it's faster to search the DOM for all elements with a specific class, but it looks cleaner and doesn't require you to create unique ids for each element:

    $('a.nested-trigger').click(...);
    
  2. I would also use classes for the icons, as it's less expensive than replacing DOM nodes:

    HTML:

    <span class="oc collpased"></span>
    

    CSS:

    .oc {
      position: relative;
      right: 10px;
      display: inline-block;
      width: 16px;
      height: 16px;
    }
    .collapsed {
      background: url(icons/bullet_add.png);
    }
    .expanded {
      background: url(icons/bullet_take.png);
    }
    

    JS:

    $(this).next("span").removeClass("collapsed").addClass("expanded");
    
  3. This is related more to the UX of your demo but I would make the icons themselves clickable as well, because they're big enough to look like buttons, and they overlap part of the node.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ All very good points. I especially agree with seand's 3rd point. I tried to click the icons and was thinking the whole thing didn't work for a second. \$\endgroup\$
    – nickles80
    Dec 18, 2012 at 4:35

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