How can I make a div stick to the top of the screen once it's been scrolled to?

You could use simply css, positioning your element as fixed:

.fixedElement {
    background-color: #c0c0c0;
    position:fixed;
    top:0;
    width:100%;
    z-index:100;
}

Edit: You should have the element with position absolute, once the scroll offset has reached the element, it should be changed to fixed, and the top position should be set to zero.

You can detect the top scroll offset of the document with the scrollTop function:

$(window).scroll(function(e){ 
  var $el = $('.fixedElement'); 
  var isPositionFixed = ($el.css('position') == 'fixed');
  if ($(this).scrollTop() > 200 && !isPositionFixed){ 
    $el.css({'position': 'fixed', 'top': '0px'}); 
  }
  if ($(this).scrollTop() < 200 && isPositionFixed){
    $el.css({'position': 'static', 'top': '0px'}); 
  } 
});

When the scroll offset reached 200, the element will stick to the top of the browser window, because is placed as fixed.

You've seen this example on Google Code's issue page and (only recently) on Stack Overflow's edit page.

CMS's answer doesn't revert the positioning when you scroll back up. Here's the shamelessly stolen code from Stack Overflow:

function moveScroller() {
    var $anchor = $("#scroller-anchor");
    var $scroller = $('#scroller');

    var move = function() {
        var st = $(window).scrollTop();
        var ot = $anchor.offset().top;
        if(st > ot) {
            $scroller.css({
                position: "fixed",
                top: "0px"
            });
        } else {
            $scroller.css({
                position: "relative",
                top: ""
            });
        }
    };
    $(window).scroll(move);
    move();
}

<div id="sidebar" style="width:270px;"> 
  <div id="scroller-anchor"></div> 
  <div id="scroller" style="margin-top:10px; width:270px"> 
    Scroller Scroller Scroller
  </div>
</div>

<script type="text/javascript"> 
  $(function() {
    moveScroller();
  });
</script> 

And a simple live demo.

A nascent, script-free alternative is position: sticky, which is supported in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. See the article on HTML5Rocks and demo, and Mozilla docs.

I had the same problem as you and ended up making a jQuery plugin to take care of it. It actually solves all the problems people have listed here, plus it adds a couple of optional features too.

Options

stickyPanelSettings = {
    // Use this to set the top margin of the detached panel.
    topPadding: 0,

    // This class is applied when the panel detaches.
    afterDetachCSSClass: "",

    // When set to true the space where the panel was is kept open.
    savePanelSpace: false,

    // Event fires when panel is detached
    // function(detachedPanel, panelSpacer){....}
    onDetached: null,

    // Event fires when panel is reattached
    // function(detachedPanel){....}
    onReAttached: null,

    // Set this using any valid jquery selector to 
    // set the parent of the sticky panel.
    // If set to null then the window object will be used.
    parentSelector: null
};

https://github.com/donnyv/sticky-panel

demo: http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/donnyv/sticky-panel/blob/master/jquery.stickyPanel/Main.htm

The simplest solution (without js) : demo

.container {
  position: relative;
}
.sticky-div {
    position: sticky;
    top: 0;
}

<div class="container">
  <h1>
    relative container & sticky div
  </h1>
  <div class="sticky-div"> this row is sticky</div>
  <div>
    content
  </div>
</div>

The info provided to answer this other question may be of help to you, Evan:

Check if element is visible after scrolling

You basically want to modify the style of the element to set it to fixed only after having verified that the document.body.scrollTop value is equal to or greater than the top of your element.