Question

Most of the examples I have found work with forms. Please see the example fiddle

http://jsfiddle.net/pepefloyd/DL53N/2/

I want to show that button only when all the fields in either group of fields has been filled out.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If I understood you correctly, you want to check if all your fields (inputs, selects) contain a value and if so, proceede…
You do not depend on forms for that (though it would be semantically more correct).

you can do something like that:

submitapproval = function()
{
    var allFilled = true;

    // iterate through all your fields and check if they do have a value set.
    $("input, select").each(function(i,el) {
      var $el = $(el);
      // if any field has no value, allFilled turns to false.
      allFilled = allFilled && ($el.val() !== "");
    });            

    if (allFilled)
    {
        // your code...
    }
}

You should consider not setting a default value for a field (like your #depends1) if you want to check if the user set it.