Question

Can anyone help me to understand why the reveal button here is not doing it’s job and revealing everything?

Also, if you have a better suggestion for a method to hide / reveal all but a few elements that would appreciated

My JSFiddle example is much easier to understand… http://jsfiddle.net/qp7HB/

$('#hide').click(function(){
    $('body > :not(#reveal)').not(this).hide();
    $("#test1").add(this).appendTo("body");    
});

$('#reveal').click(function(){
    $('body').show();
});

Answer 1

Because body was never hidden, only its children. Showing the parent of an element does not automatically show the element itself if it has been hidden explicitly. You can do:

$('#reveal').click(function(){
    $('body').children().show();
    // or  $('body > *').show();
});

DEMO