Prevent scroll-bar from adding-up to the Width of

Question

I have a small issue trying to keep my .html pages at a consistent width on Chrome, For example I have a page (1) with lots of contents that overflows the viewport's (right word?) height, so there's a vertical scroll-bar on that page (1). On page (2) i have the same layout (menus, divs,...etc) but less content, so no vertical scroll-bars in there.

The problem is that on page (1) the scroll-bars seem to push elements slightly to the left (adding-up to the width?) while everything appears well centered on page (2)

I'm still a beginner on HTML/CSS/JS, and I'm fairly convinced that this isn't so difficult, but i had no luck figuring out the solution. It does work as intended on IE10, and FireFox (non-interfering scroll-bars), I only encountered this on Chrome.

Answer 1

It doesn't seem my other answer is working quite right at the moment (but I'll continue to try to get it operational).

But basically what you'll need to do, and what it was trying to do dynamically, is set the contents' width to slightly less than that of the parent, scrollable pane.
So that when the scrollbar appears it has no affect on the content.

This EXAMPLE shows a more hacky way of attaining that goal, by hardcoding widths instead of trying to get the browser to do it for us via padding.
If this is feasible this is the most simplest solution if you don't want a permanent scrollbar.

Answer 2

For containers with a fixed width a pure CSS cross browser solution can be accomplished by wrapping the container into another div and applying the same width to both divs.

#outer {
  overflow-y: auto;
  overflow-x: hidden;
  /*
   * width must be an absolute value otherwise the inner divs width must be set via
   * javascript to the computed width of the parent container
   */
  width: 200px;
}

#inner {
  width: inherit;
}

Click here to see an example on Codepen

Answer 3

Probably

html {
    width: 100vw;
}

is just what you want.

Answer 4

_{EDIT: this answer isn't quite right at the moment, refer to my other answer to see what I was attempting to do here. I'm trying to fix it up, but if you can offer assistance do so in the comments, thanks!}

Using padding-right will mitigate the sudden appearance of a scrollbar

EXAMPLE

As you can see from the dots, the text makes it to the same point in the page before wrapping, regardless of whether or not a scrollbar is present.
This is because when a scrollbar is introduced the padding hides behind it, so the scrollbar doesn't push on the text!

Answer 5

I had the same issue on Chrome. It only happened for me when the scroll bar is always visible. (found in the general settings) I have a modal and when I open the modal I noticed that...

body {
    padding-left: 15px;
}

is added to the body. To stop this from happening I added

body {
    padding-left: 0px !important;
}

Answer 6

DISCLAIMER: overlay has been deprecated.
You can still use this if you absolutely have to, but try not to.

This only works on WebKit browsers, but I like it a lot. Will behave like auto on other browsers.

.yourContent{
   overflow-y: overlay;
}

This will make the scrollbar appear only as an overlay, thus not affecting the width of your element!