Making web content disappear based on a passed db parameters

I had a task a few days ago where I wanted to make web content appear and disappear depending on some backend DB constraints. So CSS/DHTML was the obvious choice!! By setting "style.visibility " to either 'visible' or 'hidden' you can reveal or hide web content with ease. so off I went and coded.......... I made the required div tags <div id='$id'> around the content that I wanted to appear/disappear (where the $id is from the DB). On the onmouseover event of the tag, I fired off some javascript and attempted to hide the code with the following. onmouseover="hide($id);" Javascript: function hide(id){ document.getElementById(id).style.visibility='hidden'; } The idea was to fire off the javascript and hide the tag this way. The id being passed thru is id of the div tag i.e. <div id=$id> Well...what do you know..... it would not work. Javascript would see the id being passed thru as a good parameter, but as an integer, not the required string. so I changed the code as follows. I added the letters "tagid_" before the id in the div tag i.e <div id='tagid_$id'> In the javascript I added the following var this_id="tagid_"+id; and then hide it as follows document.getElementById(this_id).style.visibility='hidden'; And THIS worked like a dream.. PS!!... the code below was NOT run in a browser to check for validity.. it is only the idea. Here is the basic sample code in full: 1. The div tags: <div id='tagid_$id' > 2. The Onmouseover() event: onmouseover="hide($id);" 3.The javascript read: function hide(id){ var this_id="tagid_"+id; document.getElementById(this_id).style.visibility='hidden'; } And this seemed to work great. Hope this helps someone out.