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.
:)
Not-so-clean, but pure HTML/CSS solution.
Updated for IE8+ JSFiddle example
By applying the StickyTableHeaders jQuery plugin to the table, the column headers will stick to the top of the viewport as you scroll down.
Example:
Here's a solution that we ended up working with (in order to deal with some edge cases and older versions of Internet Explorer, we eventually also faded out the title bar on scroll then faded it back in when scrolling ends, but in Firefox and WebKit browsers this solution just works. It assumes border-collapse: collapse.
The key to this solution is that once you apply border-collapse, CSS transforms work on the header, so it's just a matter of intercepting scroll events and setting the transform correctly. You don't need to duplicate anything. Short of this behavior being implemented properly in the browser, it's hard to imagine a more light-weight solution.
JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/podperson/tH9VU/2/
It's implemented as a simple jQuery plugin. You simply make your thead's sticky with a call like $('thead').sticky(), and they'll hang around. It works for multiple tables on a page and head sections halfway down big tables.
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.
This solution works in Chrome and IE. Since it is based on jQuery, this should work in other jQuery supported browsers as well.
TL;DR
If you target modern browsers and don't have extravagant styling needs: http://jsfiddle.net/dPixie/byB9d/3/ ... Although the big four version is pretty sweet as well this version handles fluid width a lot better.
Good news everyone!
With the advances of HTML5 and CSS3 this is now possible, at least for modern browsers. The slightly hackish implementation I came up with can be found here: http://jsfiddle.net/dPixie/byB9d/3/. I have tested it in FX 25, Chrome 31 and IE 10 ...
Relevant HTML (insert a HTML5 doctype at the top of your document though):
With this CSS:
But how?!
Simply put you have a table header, that you visually hide by making it 0px high, that also contains divs used as the fixed header. The table's container leaves enough room at the top to allow for the absolutely positioned header, and the table with scrollbars appear as you would expect.
The code above uses the positioned class to position the table absolutely (I'm using it in a popup style dialog) but you can use it in the flow of the document as well by removing the
positioned
class from the container.But ...
It's not perfect. Firefox refuses to make the header row 0px (at least I did not find any way) but stubbornly keeps it at minimum 4px ... It's not a huge problem, but depending on your styling it will mess with your borders etc.
The table is also using a faux column approach where the background color of the container itself is used as the background for the header divs, that are transparent.
Summary
All in all there might be styling issues depending on your requirements, especially borders or complicated backgrounds. There might also be problems with computability, I haven't checked it in a wide variety of browsers yet (please comment with your experiences if you try it out), but I didn't find anything like it so I thought it was worth posting anyway ...
A more refined pure CSS scrolling table
All of the pure CSS solutions I've seen so far-- clever though they may be-- lack a certain level of polish, or just don't work right in some situations. So, I decided to create my own...
Features:
Here are a couple of fiddles that show the fluid and auto width options:
Fluid Width and Height (adapts to screen size): jsFiddle (Note that the scrollbar only shows up when needed in this configuration, so you may have to shrink the frame to see it)
Auto Width, Fixed Height (easier to integrate with other content): jsFiddle
The Auto Width, Fixed Height configuration probably has more use cases, so I'll post the code below.
The method I used to freeze the header row is similar to d-Pixie's, so refer to his post for an explanation. There were a slew of bugs and limitations with that technique that could only be fixed with heaps of additional CSS and an extra div container or two.