How to Properly Spoil a Book (Part 2.1)

Confab ˈkän-ˌfab, kən-ˈ noun an informal discussion, often about a particular topic

Discussion posts are some of my favourite posts to read. New ideas get shared that way, or old ideas are revisited and given a new spin. And of course, I get to be my opinionated self as I hoist my views upon others, while pretending to be objective. Or maybe not. I do welcome alternate views and I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Yesterday I posted How to Properly Spoil a Book (Part 2) but realized this morning that I forgot to mention a few more things. This is why I’m posting Part 2.1 as a follow-up.

When it comes to changing the font colour to match the background, so that readers need to highlight the text in order to read spoilers, there are a few more problems:

It isn’t the best solution for mobile devices. While this method does successfully hide spoilers, highlighting the text will not immediately render it visible. In order to be able to read the spoiler, a mobile reader will need to copy and paste the text into another app, like a notes app. Only then will they be able to read it.
This will not hide the text in RSS feeds. This means anyone reading reviews on Feedly or Bloglovin will inevitably see the spoilers.
Basically, this is only works on a blog itself and in the emails sent out to subscribers.

The  tag only works on WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress sites. For Blogger, use the jump break. For more information, refer to Google’s Blogger support page.

Now onto one more solution I didn’t previously include.

Here’s some visible text.
<div id=”spoiler” style=”display:none”>
And here goes the hidden text.
</div>
<button title=”Click to show spoiler content” type=”button” onclick=”if(document.getElementById(‘spoiler’) .style.display==’none’) {document.getElementById(‘spoiler’) .style.display=”}else{document.getElementById(‘spoiler’) .style.display=’none’}”>Show spoiler</button>

The result will look like this:

Here’s some visible text.

I found this solution on BloggerSentral. This should work on any platform that allows you to type up posts in HTML format. This means WordPress.com, Blogger and Tumblr are all good for this bit of Javascript. Although, buttons don’t work in subscriber’s emails. Still, the spoiler doesn’t show and readers need to visit the original blog post. As for RSS feeds, the spoilers will still show.

BloggerSentral also demonstrates how to do content spoilers with simple animation. This involves editing the theme template though. I’ll probably try this on Tumblr because I’ve not found any other method that works there, which I like.