Is there a cross-browser CSS/JavaScript technique to display a long HTML table such that the column headers stay fixed on-screen and do not scroll with the table body. Think of the "freeze panes" effect in Microsoft Excel.
I want to be able to scroll through the contents of the table, but to always be able to see the column headers at the top.
To freeze the row/column we can use a simple HTML table and CSS. HTML: In HTML we can define the header row by <th> tag or we can use <td> tag also. Below example is using the <th> tag. We also put the table in DIV element to see the horizontal and vertical scrollbar by setting the overflow property of the DIV element.
Create a Table That Has a Fixed Header. We can create an HTML table that has a fixed header with some CSS. We set the height of the table element to 120px to make restrict the height of it so we can make it scrollable. To make it scrollable, we set the overflow CSS property to scroll .
By setting postion: sticky and top: 0, we can create a fixed header on a scroll in HTML tables.
If you only care about modern browsers, a fixed header can be achieved much easier by using CSS transforms. Sounds odd, but works great:
document.getElementById("wrap").addEventListener("scroll", function(){ var translate = "translate(0,"+this.scrollTop+"px)"; this.querySelector("thead").style.transform = translate; });
Support for CSS transforms is widely available except for Internet Explorer 8-.
Here is the full example for reference:
document.getElementById("wrap").addEventListener("scroll",function(){ var translate = "translate(0,"+this.scrollTop+"px)"; this.querySelector("thead").style.transform = translate; });
/* Your existing container */ #wrap { overflow: auto; height: 400px; } /* CSS for demo */ td { background-color: green; width: 200px; height: 100px; }
<div id="wrap"> <table> <thead> <tr> <th>Foo</th> <th>Bar</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> </tbody> </table> </div>
I was looking for a solution for this for a while and found most of the answers are not working or not suitable for my situation, so I wrote a simple solution with jQuery.
This is the solution outline:
Below is the code in a runnable demo.
function scrolify(tblAsJQueryObject, height) { var oTbl = tblAsJQueryObject; // for very large tables you can remove the four lines below // and wrap the table with <div> in the mark-up and assign // height and overflow property var oTblDiv = $("<div/>"); oTblDiv.css('height', height); oTblDiv.css('overflow', 'scroll'); oTbl.wrap(oTblDiv); // save original width oTbl.attr("data-item-original-width", oTbl.width()); oTbl.find('thead tr td').each(function() { $(this).attr("data-item-original-width", $(this).width()); }); oTbl.find('tbody tr:eq(0) td').each(function() { $(this).attr("data-item-original-width", $(this).width()); }); // clone the original table var newTbl = oTbl.clone(); // remove table header from original table oTbl.find('thead tr').remove(); // remove table body from new table newTbl.find('tbody tr').remove(); oTbl.parent().parent().prepend(newTbl); newTbl.wrap("<div/>"); // replace ORIGINAL COLUMN width newTbl.width(newTbl.attr('data-item-original-width')); newTbl.find('thead tr td').each(function() { $(this).width($(this).attr("data-item-original-width")); }); oTbl.width(oTbl.attr('data-item-original-width')); oTbl.find('tbody tr:eq(0) td').each(function() { $(this).width($(this).attr("data-item-original-width")); }); } $(document).ready(function() { scrolify($('#tblNeedsScrolling'), 160); // 160 is height });
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js"></script> <div style="width:300px;border:6px green solid;"> <table border="1" width="100%" id="tblNeedsScrolling"> <thead> <tr><th>Header 1</th><th>Header 2</th></tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr><td>row 1, cell 1</td><td>row 1, cell 2</td></tr> <tr><td>row 2, cell 1</td><td>row 2, cell 2</td></tr> <tr><td>row 3, cell 1</td><td>row 3, cell 2</td></tr> <tr><td>row 4, cell 1</td><td>row 4, cell 2</td></tr> <tr><td>row 5, cell 1</td><td>row 5, cell 2</td></tr> <tr><td>row 6, cell 1</td><td>row 6, cell 2</td></tr> <tr><td>row 7, cell 1</td><td>row 7, cell 2</td></tr> <tr><td>row 8, cell 1</td><td>row 8, cell 2</td></tr> </tbody> </table> </div>
This solution works in Chrome and IE. Since it is based on jQuery, this should work in other jQuery supported browsers as well.
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