[html] How to fix a Div to top of page with CSS only

I am writing a glossary page. I have the alphabet links on the top of the page. I want to keep the top of the page (including the alphabet links) fixed, whilst the section of the page with the definitions, scrolls up/down as an alphabet is clicked.

My HTML looks a bit like this:

<html>
<head><title>My Glossary</title></head>
<body>
        <div id="top">
            <a href="#A">A</a> |
             <a href="#B">B</a> |
            <a href="#Z">Z</a>
        </div>

        <div id="term-defs">
           <dl>
               <span id="A"></span>
               <dt>foo</dt>
               <dd>This is the sound made by a fool</dd>
               <!-- and so on ... -->
           </dl>
        </div>
</body>
</html>

[Edit]

The kind of effect I am trying to create is similar to the one here. The difference being that in the example in the link, the page scrolling is done when a user clicks on a category. In my case, I want to scroll the page when an index (i.e. an alphabet) at the top of the page, is clicked.

This question is related to html css

The answer is


Yes, there are a number of ways that you can do this. The "fastest" way would be to add CSS to the div similar to the following

#term-defs {
height: 300px;
overflow: scroll; }

This will force the div to be scrollable, but this might not get the best effect. Another route would be to absolute fix the position of the items at the top, you can play with this by doing something like this.

#top {
  position: fixed;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  z-index: 999;
  width: 100%;
  height: 23px;
}

This will fix it to the top, on top of other content with a height of 23px.

The final implementation will depend on what effect you really want.


You can also use flexbox, but you'd have to add a parent div that covers div#top and div#term-defs. So the HTML looks like this:

_x000D_
_x000D_
    #content {_x000D_
        width: 100%;_x000D_
        height: 100%;_x000D_
        display: flex;_x000D_
        flex-direction: column;_x000D_
    }_x000D_
_x000D_
    #term-defs {_x000D_
        flex-grow: 1;_x000D_
        overflow: auto;_x000D_
    } 
_x000D_
    <body>_x000D_
        <div id="content">_x000D_
            <div id="top">_x000D_
                <a href="#A">A</a> |_x000D_
                <a href="#B">B</a> |_x000D_
                <a href="#Z">Z</a>_x000D_
            </div>_x000D_
    _x000D_
            <div id="term-defs">_x000D_
                <dl>_x000D_
                    <span id="A"></span>_x000D_
                    <dt>foo</dt>_x000D_
                    <dd>This is the sound made by a fool</dd>_x000D_
                    <!-- and so on ... -->_x000D_
                </dl>_x000D_
            </div>_x000D_
        </div>_x000D_
    </body>
_x000D_
_x000D_
_x000D_

flex-grow ensures that the div's size is equal to the remaining size.

You could do the same without flexbox, but it would be more complicated to work out the height of #term-defs (you'd have to know the height of #top and use calc(100% - 999px) or set the height of #term-defs directly).
With flexbox dynamic sizes of the divs are possible.

One difference is that the scrollbar only appears on the term-defs div.


You can do something like this:

<html>
<head><title>My Glossary</title></head>
<body style="margin:0px;">
        <div id="top" style="position:fixed;background:white;width:100%;">
            <a href="#A">A</a> |
             <a href="#B">B</a> |
            <a href="#Z">Z</a>
        </div>

        <div id="term-defs" style="padding-top:1em;">
           <dl>
               <span id="A"></span>
               <dt>foo</dt>
               <dd>This is the sound made by a fool</dd>
               <!-- and so on ... ->
           </dl>
        </div>
</body>
</html>

It's the position:fixed that's most important, because it takes the top div from the normal page flow and fixes it at it's pre-determined position. It's also important to use the padding-top:1em because otherwise the term-defs div would start right under the top div. The background and width are there to cover the contents of the term-defs div as they scroll under the top div.

Hope this helps.


You can simply make the top div fixed:

#top { position: fixed; top: 20px; left: 20px; }