Element size and scrolling
There are many JavaScript properties that allow us to read information about element width, height and other geometry features.
We often need them when moving or positioning elements in JavaScript.
Sample element
As a sample element to demonstrate properties we’ll use the one given below:
It has the border, padding and scrolling. The full set of features. There are no margins, as they are not the part of the element itself, and there are no special properties for them.
The element looks like this:
The picture above demonstrates the most complex case when the element has a scrollbar. Some browsers (not all) reserve the space for it by taking it from the content (labeled as “content width” above).
So, without scrollbar the content width would be 300px , but if the scrollbar is 16px wide (the width may vary between devices and browsers) then only 300 — 16 = 284px remains, and we should take it into account. That’s why examples from this chapter assume that there’s a scrollbar. Without it, some calculations are simpler.
Usually paddings are shown empty on our illustrations, but if there’s a lot of text in the element and it overflows, then browsers show the “overflowing” text at padding-bottom , that’s normal.
Geometry
Here’s the overall picture with geometry properties:
Values of these properties are technically numbers, but these numbers are “of pixels”, so these are pixel measurements.
Let’s start exploring the properties starting from the outside of the element.
offsetParent, offsetLeft/Top
These properties are rarely needed, but still they are the “most outer” geometry properties, so we’ll start with them.
The offsetParent is the nearest ancestor that the browser uses for calculating coordinates during rendering.
That’s the nearest ancestor that is one of the following:
Properties offsetLeft/offsetTop provide x/y coordinates relative to offsetParent upper-left corner.
In the example below the inner has as offsetParent and offsetLeft/offsetTop shifts from its upper-left corner ( 180 ):
. There are several occasions when offsetParent is null :
- For not shown elements ( display:none or not in the document).
- For and .
- For elements with position:fixed .
offsetWidth/Height
Now let’s move on to the element itself.
These two properties are the simplest ones. They provide the “outer” width/height of the element. Or, in other words, its full size including borders.
- offsetWidth = 390 – the outer width, can be calculated as inner CSS-width ( 300px ) plus paddings ( 2 * 20px ) and borders ( 2 * 25px ).
- offsetHeight = 290 – the outer height.
Geometry properties are calculated only for displayed elements.
If an element (or any of its ancestors) has display:none or is not in the document, then all geometry properties are zero (or null for offsetParent ).
For example, offsetParent is null , and offsetWidth , offsetHeight are 0 when we created an element, but haven’t inserted it into the document yet, or it (or its ancestor) has display:none .
We can use this to check if an element is hidden, like this:
Please note that such isHidden returns true for elements that are on-screen, but have zero sizes.
clientTop/Left
Inside the element we have the borders.
To measure them, there are properties clientTop and clientLeft .
…But to be precise – these properties are not border width/height, but rather relative coordinates of the inner side from the outer side.
It becomes visible when the document is right-to-left (the operating system is in Arabic or Hebrew languages). The scrollbar is then not on the right, but on the left, and then clientLeft also includes the scrollbar width.
In that case, clientLeft would be not 25 , but with the scrollbar width 25 + 16 = 41 .
Here’s the example in hebrew:
clientWidth/Height
These properties provide the size of the area inside the element borders.
They include the content width together with paddings, but without the scrollbar:
On the picture above let’s first consider clientHeight .
There’s no horizontal scrollbar, so it’s exactly the sum of what’s inside the borders: CSS-height 200px plus top and bottom paddings ( 2 * 20px ) total 240px .
Now clientWidth – here the content width is not 300px , but 284px , because 16px are occupied by the scrollbar. So the sum is 284px plus left and right paddings, total 324px .
If there are no paddings, then clientWidth/Height is exactly the content area, inside the borders and the scrollbar (if any).
So when there’s no padding we can use clientWidth/clientHeight to get the content area size.
scrollWidth/Height
These properties are like clientWidth/clientHeight , but they also include the scrolled out (hidden) parts:
- scrollHeight = 723 – is the full inner height of the content area including the scrolled out parts.
- scrollWidth = 324 – is the full inner width, here we have no horizontal scroll, so it equals clientWidth .
We can use these properties to expand the element wide to its full width/height.
// expand the element to the full content height element.style.height = `$px`;Click the button to expand the element:
text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
scrollLeft/scrollTop
Properties scrollLeft/scrollTop are the width/height of the hidden, scrolled out part of the element.
On the picture below we can see scrollHeight and scrollTop for a block with a vertical scroll.
In other words, scrollTop is “how much is scrolled up”.
Most of the geometry properties here are read-only, but scrollLeft/scrollTop can be changed, and the browser will scroll the element.
If you click the element below, the code elem.scrollTop += 10 executes. That makes the element content scroll 10px down.
Setting scrollTop to 0 or a big value, such as 1e9 will make the element scroll to the very top/bottom respectively.
Don’t take width/height from CSS
We’ve just covered geometry properties of DOM elements, that can be used to get widths, heights and calculate distances.
But as we know from the chapter Styles and classes, we can read CSS-height and width using getComputedStyle .
So why not to read the width of an element with getComputedStyle , like this?
let elem = document.body; alert( getComputedStyle(elem).width ); // show CSS width for elemWhy should we use geometry properties instead? There are two reasons:
- First, CSS width/height depend on another property: box-sizing that defines “what is” CSS width and height. A change in box-sizing for CSS purposes may break such JavaScript.
- Second, CSS width/height may be auto , for instance for an inline element:
alert( getComputedStyle(elem).width ); // auto And there’s one more reason: a scrollbar. Sometimes the code that works fine without a scrollbar becomes buggy with it, because a scrollbar takes the space from the content in some browsers. So the real width available for the content is less than CSS width. And clientWidth/clientHeight take that into account.
…But with getComputedStyle(elem).width the situation is different. Some browsers (e.g. Chrome) return the real inner width, minus the scrollbar, and some of them (e.g. Firefox) – CSS width (ignore the scrollbar). Such cross-browser differences is the reason not to use getComputedStyle , but rather rely on geometry properties.
If your browser reserves the space for a scrollbar (most browsers for Windows do), then you can test it below.
The element with text has CSS width:300px .
On a Desktop Windows OS, Firefox, Chrome, Edge all reserve the space for the scrollbar. But Firefox shows 300px , while Chrome and Edge show less. That’s because Firefox returns the CSS width and other browsers return the “real” width.
Please note that the described difference is only about reading getComputedStyle(. ).width from JavaScript, visually everything is correct.
Summary
Elements have the following geometry properties:
- offsetParent – is the nearest positioned ancestor or td , th , table , body .
- offsetLeft/offsetTop – coordinates relative to the upper-left edge of offsetParent .
- offsetWidth/offsetHeight – “outer” width/height of an element including borders.
- clientLeft/clientTop – the distances from the upper-left outer corner to the upper-left inner (content + padding) corner. For left-to-right OS they are always the widths of left/top borders. For right-to-left OS the vertical scrollbar is on the left so clientLeft includes its width too.
- clientWidth/clientHeight – the width/height of the content including paddings, but without the scrollbar.
- scrollWidth/scrollHeight – the width/height of the content, just like clientWidth/clientHeight , but also include scrolled-out, invisible part of the element.
- scrollLeft/scrollTop – width/height of the scrolled out upper part of the element, starting from its upper-left corner.
All properties are read-only except scrollLeft/scrollTop that make the browser scroll the element if changed.
Tasks
What’s the scroll from the bottom?
The elem.scrollTop property is the size of the scrolled out part from the top. How to get the size of the bottom scroll (let’s call it scrollBottom )?
Write the code that works for an arbitrary elem .
P.S. Please check your code: if there’s no scroll or the element is fully scrolled down, then it should return 0 .
let scrollBottom = elem.scrollHeight - elem.scrollTop - elem.clientHeight;In other words: (full height) minus (scrolled out top part) minus (visible part) – that’s exactly the scrolled out bottom part.
What is the scrollbar width?
Write the code that returns the width of a standard scrollbar.
For Windows it usually varies between 12px and 20px . If the browser doesn’t reserve any space for it (the scrollbar is half-translucent over the text, also happens), then it may be 0px .
P.S. The code should work for any HTML document, do not depend on its content.
To get the scrollbar width, we can create an element with the scroll, but without borders and paddings.
Then the difference between its full width offsetWidth and the inner content area width clientWidth will be exactly the scrollbar:
// create a div with the scroll let div = document.createElement('div'); div.style.overflowY = 'scroll'; div.style.width = '50px'; div.style.height = '50px'; // must put it in the document, otherwise sizes will be 0 document.body.append(div); let scrollWidth = div.offsetWidth - div.clientWidth; div.remove(); alert(scrollWidth);