Position fixed within container element instead of the browser / viewport

Question

I need to position a header to be fixed within the containing parent so that it follows when scrolling. The problem is that

position:fixed

fixes the position to the browser, not the parent. What this is resulting in is that when I have a container that has a horizontal scroll for overflow in the width (the content is wider than the container), my fixed header does not have the overflow-scroll as the content of the table does.

See this fiddle demo

So the goal here is to fix the position of the header, but fixed relative to it's parent container. In this fiddle, you can see that I've commented out a block of css:

.container{

     /*-webkit-transform: translateZ(0);
     -moz-transform: translateZ(0);
     -ms-transform: translateZ(0);
     transform: translateZ(0);*/

     -webkit-transform: none;
     -moz-transform: none;
     -ms-transform: none;
     transform: none;   
}

If you replace the current css block (with transform set to none) with the one with translateZ, the header will get positioned within it's parent container, but is no longer fixed.

Anyone know how to solve this? Preferred solution would be CSS/HTML only and avoid JS but if nothing else, then JS is of course what I need to go with!

Answer 1

CSS can't do this by itself.

Position: fixed works in relation to the viewport, not it's containing element.

I've seen an attempt to solve this problem using the CSS3 transform property, but (as you noted in your comment to my first answer) it doesn't seem to work.

I understand you can't use any client-side library but that's the only solution available to my knowledge. For you and others who may one day need this, here's a solution that works. It employs a bit of jQuery:

Positioning an element inside another element with the positioned element fixed along the x and y axes (i.e. position fixed horizontally and vertically).

http://jsfiddle.net/8086p69z/8/

HTML

<div class="moving-article">

    <div class="container">

    <header class="fixed-header">FIXED HEADER</header>

        <ul>
        <li>SCROLL</li>
        <li>SCROLL</li>
        <li>SCROLL</li>
        </ul>    

    </div>

</div>

CSS (relevant section)

.moving-article {
    height: 150px;
    width: 75%;
    overflow-x: scroll;     
}

.fixed-header {
    background: rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
    width: 50%;
    text-align: center;
    line-height: 40px;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
}

.container{
    width: 1000px;
}

jQuery

var leftOffset = parseInt($(".fixed-header").css('left'));
$(window).scroll(function(){
    $('.fixed-header').css({
        'left': $(this).scrollLeft() + leftOffset
    });
});