Making horizontal scrollbar always visible even if bottom is out of view

user_1514875 0
Viewed 17945

I will start this question with a snippet showing almost what I am trying to accomplish.

.wrapper {
  overflow: hidden;
  display: flex;
}

.sidebar {
  min-width: 200px;
  background: #333;
  color: #FFF;
}

.container {
  flex: 1;
  overflow-x: scroll;
}

.long {
  width: 2000px;
}

.header {
 background: #666;
}
<div class="wrapper">

  <div class="sidebar">
    Sidebar
  </div>

  <div class="container">
    <div class="header long">
      Header
    </div>
    <div class="content">
    <div class="long">
      I am long
    </div>
      Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>
    </div>
  
  </div>
</div>

As you can see I have a .sidebar (left), .content (right).

The problem is that I want to have the horizontal scrollbar on .content always visible, even when the body is not vertical scrolled to the bottom.

As you can see on the pictures, when at the top of the body-scrollbar, there are no visible scrollbar on .content

Current result

enter image description here

Expected result

enter image description here

css html javascript
8 Answers

Best way to achieve always showing the horizontal scroll bar is like this:

By default, the horizontal scroll bar only appears when the user hovers over the container or an element in the scroll. Which can be useless if you want the user to know there are more items to swipe/or flick through.

Here I got a list of categories they are list items or simply links. I want them to be displayed along side the horizontal in desktop and in mobile a user can flick through. It can also be used for images, or cards. This is good user experience and better than stacking in mobile.

To always show the horizontal scroller, in order for users to know there is more content to scroll horizontally.

Here is the html:

// Note I added z-index in case you can't reach the link due to another navbar on top. You can play with z-index if you need to. 
<div class="cool-shadow" style="z-index: 5;">
  <div class="scrollable-nav">
    <div class="container">
      <div class="some-class">
        <a href="#" class="navbar-item">Sports</a>
        <a href="#" class="navbar-item">News</a>
        <a href="#" class="navbar-item">Science</a>
        <a href="#" class="navbar-item">Programming</a>
        <a href="#" class="navbar-item">Bla Blah</a>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Here is the css to make them scrollable:

.scrollable-nav {
  // First four are essential.
  display: block;
  width: 100%; 
  overflow-x: scroll;
  white-space: nowrap;
  // You can change these below if you'd like
  height: auto;
  padding: 10px;
  margin: 0;
  padding-top: 8px;
  padding-bottom: 8px;
  background-color: #2f3142;
  z-index: 5;
  
}

// Make sure the navbar-items are inline block.
.scrollable-nav .navbar-item {
  display: inline-block;
}

Here is the css to ensure the scroller is always visible. To always show the x scroll bar for the user to be aware to flick through the items horizontally, especially when they are on mobile or whenever the the links are overflowing regardless of screen size.

.scrollable-nav::-webkit-scrollbar:horizontal {
  height: 11px;
}

.scrollable-nav::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb {
  border-radius: 8px;
  border: 2px solid green;
  /* should match background, can't be transparent */
  background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, .5);
}
// This one is important.
.scrollable-nav::-webkit-scrollbar {
  -webkit-appearance: none;
}

/* 
.scrollable-nav::-webkit-scrollbar:horizontal {
  width: 11px; // This one is optional in case you wanna do this vertically too
} */
user_81499360

Try to add this css into body

body, html {
  height: calc(100vh);
  overflow-x: scroll;
}

.element_with_minWidth {
   min-width: 1000px;
}
user_55449360

Is this what you want?

body {
  margin: 0;
}

.wrapper {
  height: 100vh;
  width: 100vw;
  display: flex;
}

.sidebar {
  flex: 1 0 200px;
  background: #333;
  color: #FFF;
}

.container {
  flex: 1 1 auto;
  overflow: auto;
}

.long {
  width: 2000px;
}

.header {
  background: #666;
  position: sticky;
  top: 0;
}
<div class="wrapper">

  <div class="sidebar">
    Sidebar
  </div>
  <div class="container">
    <div class="header long">
      Header
    </div>
    <div class="content">
      <div class="long">
        I am long
      </div>
      Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long
      text
      <br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long
      text
      <br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long
      text
      <br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long
      text
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      text
      <br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long text<br/>Long
      text
      <br/>Long text<br/>
    </div>

  </div>
</div>

If you want the header to go up when scrolling vertically, remove

position: sticky;
top: 0;

... from its CSS.

Ref: "I want the scrollbar on <body> element": when you're scrolling a website you don't care what element the scrollbar is attached to. All you care is that it's there, it's accessible and usable.

user_18916770
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