# Hide/Show Buttons and Properties

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Show/Hide Hidden Text

A Hide/Show button hides or shows a group of objects.

| Creating and Using a Hide/Show Button

Select one or more objects and choose Edit | Action Buttons | Hide/Show to create a Hide/Show button that toggles between Hide and Show, depending on whether the objects it controls are visible or not. To create two buttons, one that hides and one that shows, hold the Shift key when you choose the command. Use Hide and Show buttons when there are details in a sketch which you sometimes want visible and sometimes want hidden. For example, your sketch might use a single triangle to show the construction of the circumcenter, centroid, and orthocenter. If you show all the construction lines at the same time, the sketch will be very confusing. Use Hide/Show buttons to show or hide the construction lines for each of the three different constructions. Normally the button’s label changes from Hide to Show depending on whether the objects it controls are visible or not. (When all the objects are hidden, the button is labeled Show; otherwise it’s labeled Hide.) Choose Edit | Properties | Hide/Show to:
• | Set a button to always hide, always show, or toggle between hiding and showing.
• | Determine whether a button selects its objects after showing them.
• | Fade objects in or out when the button shows or hides them.
Note
When you change a button’s selection and fading behavior, Sketchpad remembers your new settings and uses them for future Hide/Show buttons.

| Hide/Show Properties

This Properties panel appears only for Hide/Show action buttons. Use it to determine the type of action the Hide/Show button performs as well as various aspects of how it works. To open this dialog box, select the button and choose Edit | Properties, or choose Properties from the Context menu. Action:
• | Choose Always show objects to make this button into a Show button, which always shows the objects to which it applies.
• | Choose Always hide objects to make this button into a Hide button, which always hides the objects to which it applies.
• | Choose Toggle between hide and show to make this a toggling Hide/Show button, which hides objects when clicked on if one or more of its objects are showing and shows its objects when clicked on if they are all hidden.
If you don’t change the default label of a toggling Hide/Show button, the label changes between Hide and Show to describe the action it will perform next. Effects:
• | If Select objects after showing is checked, when you click on a Show button all its parental objects are selected. (Even if some of the button’s objects are already showing, they are still selected.) If unchecked, the objects are left unselected after they’re shown.
• | If Fade objects in or out is checked, objects fade in or out of visibility gradually when you click on the Hide/Show button. If unchecked, objects appear or disappear immediately.