Prevent scrolling of parent element when inner element scroll position reaches top/bottom?
I am adding this answer for completeness because the accepted answer by @amustill does not correctly solve the problem in Internet Explorer. Please see the comments in my original post for details. In addition, this solution does not require any plugins - only jQuery.
In essence, the code works by handling the mousewheel event. Each such event contains a wheelDelta equal to the number of px which it is going to move the scrollable area to. If this value is >0, then we are scrolling up. If the wheelDelta is <0 then we are scrolling down.
FireFox: FireFox uses DOMMouseScroll as the event, and populates originalEvent.detail, whose +/- is reversed from what is described above. It generally returns intervals of 3, while other browsers return scrolling in intervals of 120 (at least on my machine). To correct, we simply detect it and multiply by -40 to normalize.
@amustill's answer works by canceling the event if the <div>'s scrollable area is already either at the top or the bottom maximum position. However, Internet Explorer disregards the canceled event in situations where the delta is larger than the remaining scrollable space.
In other words, if you have a 200px tall <div> containing 500px of scrollable content, and the current scrollTop is 400, a mousewheel event which tells the browser to scroll 120px further will result in both the <div> and the <body> scrolling, because 400 + 120 > 500.
So - to solve the problem, we have to do something slightly different, as shown below:
The requisite jQuery code is:
$(document).on('DOMMouseScroll mousewheel', '.Scrollable', function(ev) {
var $this = $(this),
scrollTop = this.scrollTop,
scrollHeight = this.scrollHeight,
height = $this.innerHeight(),
delta = (ev.type == 'DOMMouseScroll' ?
ev.originalEvent.detail * -40 :
ev.originalEvent.wheelDelta),
up = delta > 0;
var prevent = function() {
ev.stopPropagation();
ev.preventDefault();
ev.returnValue = false;
return false;
}
if (!up && -delta > scrollHeight - height - scrollTop) {
// Scrolling down, but this will take us past the bottom.
$this.scrollTop(scrollHeight);
return prevent();
} else if (up && delta > scrollTop) {
// Scrolling up, but this will take us past the top.
$this.scrollTop(0);
return prevent();
}
});
In essence, this code cancels any scrolling event which would create the unwanted edge condition, then uses jQuery to set the scrollTop of the <div> to either the maximum or minimum value, depending on which direction the mousewheel event was requesting.
Because the event is canceled entirely in either case, it never propagates to the body at all, and therefore solves the issue in IE, as well as all of the other browsers.
I have also put up a working example on jsFiddle.
It's possible with the use of Brandon Aaron's Mousewheel plugin.
Here's a demo: http://jsbin.com/jivutakama/edit?html,js,output
All the solutions given in this thread don't mention an existing - and native - way to solve this problem without reordering DOM and/or using event preventing tricks. But there's a good reason: this way is proprietary - and available on MS web platform only. Quoting MSDN:
-ms-scroll-chaining property - specifies the scrolling behavior that occurs when a user hits the scroll limit during a manipulation. Property values:
chained - Initial value. The nearest scrollable parent element begins scrolling when the user hits a scroll limit during a manipulation. No bounce effect is shown.
none - A bounce effect is shown when the user hits a scroll limit during a manipulation.
Granted, this property is supported on IE10+/Edge only. Still, here's a telling quote:
To give you a sense of how popular preventing scroll chaining may be, according to my quick http-archive search "-ms-scroll-chaining: none" is used in 0.4% of top 300K pages despite being limited in functionality and only supported on IE/Edge.
And now good news, everyone! Starting from Chrome 63, we finally have a native cure for Blink-based platforms too - and that's both Chrome (obviously) and Android WebView (soon).
Quoting the introducing article:
The overscroll-behavior property is a new CSS feature that controls the behavior of what happens when you over-scroll a container (including the page itself). You can use it to cancel scroll chaining, disable/customize the pull-to-refresh action, disable rubberbanding effects on iOS (when Safari implements overscroll-behavior), and more.[...]
The property takes three possible values:
auto - Default. Scrolls that originate on the element may propagate to ancestor elements.
contain - prevents scroll chaining. Scrolls do not propagate to ancestors but local effects within the node are shown. For example, the overscroll glow effect on Android or the rubberbanding effect on iOS which notifies the user when they've hit a scroll boundary. Note: using overscroll-behavior: contain on the html element prevents overscroll navigation actions.
none - same as contain but it also prevents overscroll effects within the node itself (e.g. Android overscroll glow or iOS rubberbanding).
[...] The best part is that using overscroll-behavior does not adversely affect page performance like the hacks mentioned in the intro!
Here's this feature in action. And here's corresponding CSS Module document.
UPDATE: Firefox, since version 59, has joined the club, and MS Edge is expected to implement this feature in version 18. Here's the corresponding caniusage.