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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T09:23:38+00:00

How can you collapse div and p -elements if they are empty by CSS

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How can you collapse div and p -elements if they are empty by CSS such that the tags are not shown for the user in the source code?

These elements are in my source code although they are empty.
This causes bugs with the rest of the site.

I run this unsuccessfully

div.unsuccessful,
div.unsuccessful p {
    visibility: collapse;                                                                                                                                                                                      
}

This suggests me that you apparently cannot do such a thing by CSS.
Perhaps, other tool such as PHP is needed.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    CSS has no influence on the actual HTML code, so this cannot be done. In the (upcoming) CSS3, you could stop them from being rendered using the :empty pseudo-class:

    div:empty {
    display: none;
}

    That is of course not the same thing, but it would probably fix the problems you’re having.. if only browsers actually supported it, which they don’t, yet.

    The best option is to remove them at the server, using a scripting language like PHP. I suppose you could do it client-side with JavaScript, but that’s a horrible solution, imo.

    That being said, what problems are you having with these empty tags? Why are they there in the first place? It seems to me that some redesign is in order, to prevent the unnecessary tags from being generated in the first place.

    Also, be careful. Empty tags are not always meaningless. In fact, removing every empty <div> out there can be considered harmful.

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