I've been searching for a "lightbox" type solution that allows this but haven't found one yet (please, suggest if you know of any).
The behavior I'm trying to recreate is just like what you'd see at Pinterest when clicking on an image. The overlay is scrollable (as in the whole overlay moves up like a page on top of a page) but the body behind the overlay is fixed.
I attempted to create this with just CSS (i.e. a div
overlay on top of the whole page and body with overflow: hidden
), but it doesn't prevent div
from being scrollable.
How to keep the body/page from scrolling but keep scrolling inside the fullscreen container?
Theory
Looking at current implementation of the pinterest site (it might change in the future), when you open the overlay, a noscroll
class is applied to the body
element (setting overflow: hidden
) making the body
no longer scrollable.
The overlay created on-the-fly or already injected in the page and made visible via display: block
— it makes no difference – has position : fixed
and overflow-y: scroll
, with top
, left
, right
and bottom
properties set to 0
: this style makes the overlay fill the whole viewport (but now we are in 2022, so you may use inset: 0
instead).
The div
inside the overlay is in position: static
so the vertical scrollbar is related to that element. This is resulting in a scrollable but fixed overlay.
When you close the overlay, you have to hide it (using display: none
) and you could even remove the node via javascript (or just the content inside, it's up to you but also depends on the nature of the content).
The final step is to also remove the noscroll
class applied to the body
(so the overflow
property gets back to the value it had previously)
Code
(it works by changing the aria-hidden
attribute of the overlay in order to show and hide it and to increase its accessibility).
Markup
(open button)
<button type="button" class="open-overlay">OPEN LAYER</button>
(overlay and close button)
<section class="overlay" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">
<div>
<h2>Hello, I'm the overlayer</h2>
...
<button type="button" class="close-overlay">CLOSE LAYER</button>
</div>
</section>
CSS
.noscroll {
overflow: hidden;
}
.overlay {
position: fixed;
overflow-y: scroll;
inset: 0; }
[aria-hidden="true"] { display: none; }
[aria-hidden="false"] { display: block; }
Javascript (vanilla-JS)
var body = document.body,
overlay = document.querySelector('.overlay'),
overlayBtts = document.querySelectorAll('button[class$="overlay"]'),
openingBtt;
[].forEach.call(overlayBtts, function(btt) {
btt.addEventListener('click', function() {
/* Detect the button class name */
var overlayOpen = this.className === 'open-overlay';
/* storing a reference to the opening button */
if (overlayOpen) {
openingBtt = this;
}
/* Toggle the aria-hidden state on the overlay and the
no-scroll class on the body */
overlay.setAttribute('aria-hidden', !overlayOpen);
body.classList.toggle('noscroll', overlayOpen);
/* On some mobile browser when the overlay was previously
opened and scrolled, if you open it again it doesn't
reset its scrollTop property */
overlay.scrollTop = 0;
/* forcing focus for Assistive technologies but note:
- if your modal has just a phrase and a button move the
focus on the button
- if your modal has a long text inside (e.g. a privacy
policy) move the focus on the first heading inside
the modal
- otherwise just focus the modal.
When you close the overlay restore the focus on the
button that opened the modal.
*/
if (overlayOpen) {
overlay.focus();
}
else {
openingBtt.focus();
openingBtt = null;
}
}, false);
});
/* detect Escape key when the overlay is open */
document.body.addEventListener('keyup', (ev) => {
if (ev.key === "Escape" && overlay.getAttribute('aria-hidden') === 'false') {
overlay.setAttribute('aria-hidden', 'true');
body.classList.toggle('noscroll', false);
openingBtt.focus();
openingBtt = null;
}
})
Finally, here's another example in which the overlay opens with a fade-in effect by a CSS transition
applied to the opacity
property. Also a padding-right
is applied to avoid a reflow on the underlying text when the scrollbar disappears.
CSS
.noscroll { overflow: hidden; }
@media (min-device-width: 1025px) {
/* not strictly necessary, just an experiment for
this specific example and couldn't be necessary
at all on some browser */
.noscroll {
padding-right: 15px;
}
}
.overlay {
position: fixed;
overflow-y: scroll;
inset: 0;
}
[aria-hidden="true"] {
transition: opacity 1s, z-index 0s 1s;
width: 100vw;
z-index: -1;
opacity: 0;
}
[aria-hidden="false"] {
transition: opacity 1s;
width: 100%;
z-index: 1;
opacity: 1;
}