August 27, 2020

Scrolling

The scroll event allows reacting to a page or element scrolling. There are quite a few good things we can do here.

For instance:

Show/hide additional controls or information depending on where in the document the user is.
Load more data when the user scrolls down till the end of the page.

Here’s a small function to show the current scroll:

          window.addEventListener('scroll', function() {
  document.getElementById('showScroll').innerHTML = window.pageYOffset + 'px';
});
        

In action:

Current scroll = scroll the window

The scroll event works both on the window and on scrollable elements.

Prevent scrolling

How do we make something unscrollable?

We can’t prevent scrolling by using event.preventDefault() in onscroll listener, because it triggers after the scroll has already happened.

But we can prevent scrolling by event.preventDefault() on an event that causes the scroll, for instance keydown event for pageUp and pageDown.

If we add an event handler to these events and event.preventDefault() in it, then the scroll won’t start.

There are many ways to initiate a scroll, so it’s more reliable to use CSS, overflow property.

Here are few tasks that you can solve or look through to see applications of onscroll.

Tasks

Endless page

Create an endless page. When a visitor scrolls it to the end, it auto-appends current date-time to the text (so that a visitor can scroll more).

Like this:

Please note two important features of the scroll:

The scroll is “elastic”. We can scroll a little beyond the document start or end in some browsers/devices (empty space below is shown, and then the document will automatically “bounces back” to normal).
The scroll is imprecise. When we scroll to page end, then we may be in fact like 0-50px away from the real document bottom.

So, “scrolling to the end” should mean that the visitor is no more than 100px away from the document end.

P.S. In real life we may want to show “more messages” or “more goods”.

Open a sandbox for the task.

The core of the solution is a function that adds more dates to the page (or loads more stuff in real-life) while we’re at the page end.

We can call it immediately and add as a window.onscroll handler.

The most important question is: “How do we detect that the page is scrolled to bottom?”

Let’s use window-relative coordinates.

The document is represented (and contained) within <html> tag, that is document.documentElement.

We can get window-relative coordinates of the whole document as document.documentElement.getBoundingClientRect(), the bottom property will be window-relative coordinate of the document bottom.

For instance, if the height of the whole HTML document is 2000px, then:

          // when we're on the top of the page
// window-relative top = 0
document.documentElement.getBoundingClientRect().top = 0

// window-relative bottom = 2000
// the document is long, so that is probably far beyond the window bottom
document.documentElement.getBoundingClientRect().bottom = 2000
        

If we scroll 500px below, then:

          // document top is above the window 500px
document.documentElement.getBoundingClientRect().top = -500
// document bottom is 500px closer
document.documentElement.getBoundingClientRect().bottom = 1500
        

When we scroll till the end, assuming that the window height is 600px:

          // document top is above the window 1400px
document.documentElement.getBoundingClientRect().top = -1400
// document bottom is below the window 600px
document.documentElement.getBoundingClientRect().bottom = 600
        

Please note that the bottom can’t be 0, because it never reaches the window top. The lowest limit of the bottom coordinate is the window height (we assumed it to be 600), we can’t scroll it any more up.

We can obtain the window height as document.documentElement.clientHeight.

For our task, we need to know when the document bottom is not no more than 100px away from it (that is: 600-700px, if the height is 600).

So here’s the function:

          function populate() {
  while(true) {
    // document bottom
    let windowRelativeBottom = document.documentElement.getBoundingClientRect().bottom;

    // if the user hasn't scrolled far enough (>100px to the end)
    if (windowRelativeBottom > document.documentElement.clientHeight + 100) break;

    // let's add more data
    document.body.insertAdjacentHTML("beforeend", `<p>Date: ${new Date()}</p>`);
  }
}
        

Open the solution in a sandbox.

Up/down button

Create a “to the top” button to help with page scrolling.

It should work like this:

While the page is not scrolled down at least for the window height – it’s invisible.
When the page is scrolled down more than the window height – there appears an “upwards” arrow in the left-top corner. If the page is scrolled back, it disappears.
When the arrow is clicked, the page scrolls to the top.

Like this (top-left corner, scroll to see):

Open a sandbox for the task.

Open the solution in a sandbox.

Load visible images

Let’s say we have a slow-speed client and want to save their mobile traffic.

For that purpose we decide not to show images immediately, but rather replace them with placeholders, like this:

<img src="placeholder.svg" width="128" height="128" data-src="real.jpg">

So, initially all images are placeholder.svg. When the page scrolls to the position where the user can see the image – we change src to the one in data-src, and so the image loads.

Here’s an example in iframe:

Scroll it to see images load “on-demand”.

Requirements:

When the page loads, those images that are on-screen should load immediately, prior to any scrolling.
Some images may be regular, without data-src. The code should not touch them.
Once an image is loaded, it should not reload any more when scrolled in/out.

P.S. If you can, make a more advanced solution that would “preload” images that are one page below/after the current position.

P.P.S. Only vertical scroll is to be handled, no horizontal scrolling.

Open a sandbox for the task.

The onscroll handler should check which images are visible and show them.

We also want to run it when the page loads, to detect immediately visible images and load them.

The code should execute when the document is loaded, so that it has access to its content.

Or put it at the <body> bottom:

          // ...the page content is above...

function isVisible(elem) {

  let coords = elem.getBoundingClientRect();

  let windowHeight = document.documentElement.clientHeight;

  // top elem edge is visible?
  let topVisible = coords.top > 0 && coords.top < windowHeight;

  // bottom elem edge is visible?
  let bottomVisible = coords.bottom < windowHeight && coords.bottom > 0;

  return topVisible || bottomVisible;
}

The showVisible() function uses the visibility check, implemented by isVisible(), to load visible images:

          function showVisible() {
  for (let img of document.querySelectorAll('img')) {
    let realSrc = img.dataset.src;
    if (!realSrc) continue;

    if (isVisible(img)) {
      img.src = realSrc;
      img.dataset.src = '';
    }
  }
}

showVisible();
window.onscroll = showVisible;
        

P.S. The solution also has a variant of isVisible that “preloads” images that are within 1 page above/below the current document scroll.

Open the solution in a sandbox.

Tutorial map

Scrolling

Prevent scrolling

Tasks

Endless page

Up/down button

Load visible images

Chapter

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