[thelist] Scrolling table cells

Andrew Clover and at doxdesk.com
Fri Jan 25 06:03:01 CST 2002


Jeremy Williams <jobarr at herzeleid.com> wrote:

> I know that it can not be really done with regular HTML alone, but I have
> seen table cells which were scrolled by other methods. They seem to be done
> with layers/java script or something like that.

Yes, they usually are, which can be tricky for accessibility: if CSS is
available but JavaScript isn't (or enough DHTML support isn't), much of
the content can become unviewable. (Aaron's previously-mentioned scroller
script at youngpup.net has a nice workaround on this.)

Rammstein's scroller is also better than most since it works with
many browsers (instead of just IE and Netscape 4, which most of these scripts
seem to be limited to). However it still suffers from a few usability
problems - it scrolls far too fast (a common problem), and there's no
draggable-scroll-bar bit.

An alternative approach is to use CSS only, giving the element the style
'overflow: auto;'. The advantage of this is that you get a true scrollbar
which works the same as all other scrollbars, and you don't need scripting.
The disadvantages are that it isn't supported on Netscape 4, Opera doesn't
implement it properly, and you can't control the look of the scrollbars
(except under IE5.5+/Windows, which allows you to change their colour).

--
Andrew Clover
mailto:and at doxdesk.com
http://and.doxdesk.com/



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