Question

In other words, why can’t I do this:

<a id="projectsButton" 
visible=<%= someFunctionWhichEvalsToFalse() ? false : true %>>
</a>

It seems to do nothing. I checked this by switching the false and true.

What can I do about this?

Answer 1

You can do it, but it won’t do anything, since HTML has no visible attribute.

Instead, you can set the display CSS property, like this:

<a id="projectsButton" 
   style="display: <%= someFunctionWhichEvalsToFalse() ? "none" : "inline" %>">

Alternatively, you can put the entire tag into an if block, like this:

<% if (!someFunctionWhichEvalsToFalse()) { %>
    <a id="projectsButton"></a>
<% } %>