Html – Prevent wrapping of span or div

csshtml

I'd like to put a group of div elements of fixed width into a container and have the horizontal scroll bar appeared. The div/span elements should appear in a line, left to right in the order they appear in the HTML (essentially unwrapped).

This way the horizontal scroll bar will appear and can be used instead of the vertical scroll bar for reading through the content (left to right).

I've tried floating them in a container and then putting a white-space: nowrap style on the container, but alas, it still seems to wrap.

Ideas?

It looked like this:

.slideContainer {
    white-space: nowrap;
}
.slide { 
    width: 800px;
    float: left;
    display: inline;
}

<div class="slideContainer">
    <div class="slide">Some content</div>
    <div class="slide">More content</div>
    <div class="slide">Even More content!</div>
</div>

UPDATE:
See site for examples, but they were wrong about not being another way – I'm sure the article is old though.

Best Answer

Try this:

.slideContainer {
    overflow-x: scroll;
    white-space: nowrap;
}
.slide {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 600px;
    white-space: normal;
}

<div class="slideContainer">
    <span class="slide">Some content</span>
    <span class="slide">More content. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</span>
    <span class="slide">Even more content!</span>
</div>

Note that you can omit .slideContainer { overflow-x: scroll; } (which browsers may or may not support when you read this), and you'll get a scrollbar on the window instead of on this container.

The key here is display: inline-block. This has decent cross-browser support nowadays, but as usual, it's worth testing in all target browsers to be sure.

2015 update: the flexbox approach

There are two other answers briefly mentioning flexbox; however, that was more than two years ago, and they don't provide any examples. The specification for flexbox has definitely settled now.

Note: Though CSS Flexible Boxes Layout specification is at the Candidate Recommendation stage, not all browsers have implemented it. WebKit implementation must be prefixed with -webkit-; Internet Explorer implements an old version of the spec, prefixed with -ms-; Opera 12.10 implements the latest version of the spec, unprefixed. See the compatibility table on each property for an up-to-date compatibility status.

(taken from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Flexible_boxes)

All major browsers and IE11+ support Flexbox. For IE 10 or older, you can use the FlexieJS shim.

To check current support you can also see here: http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox

Working example

With flexbox you can easily switch between any of your rows or columns either having fixed dimensions, content-sized dimensions or remaining-space dimensions. In my example I have set the header to snap to its content (as per the OPs question), I've added a footer to show how to add a fixed-height region and then set the content area to fill up the remaining space.

html,
body {
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0;
}

.box {
  display: flex;
  flex-flow: column;
  height: 100%;
}

.box .row {
  border: 1px dotted grey;
}

.box .row.header {
  flex: 0 1 auto;
  /* The above is shorthand for:
  flex-grow: 0,
  flex-shrink: 1,
  flex-basis: auto
  */
}

.box .row.content {
  flex: 1 1 auto;
}

.box .row.footer {
  flex: 0 1 40px;
}

<!-- Obviously, you could use HTML5 tags like `header`, `footer` and `section` -->

<div class="box">
  <div class="row header">
    <p><b>header</b>
      <br />
      <br />(sized to content)</p>
  </div>
  <div class="row content">
    <p>
      <b>content</b>
      (fills remaining space)
    </p>
  </div>
  <div class="row footer">
    <p><b>footer</b> (fixed height)</p>
  </div>
</div>

In the CSS above, the flex property shorthands the flex-grow, flex-shrink, and flex-basis properties to establish the flexibility of the flex items. Mozilla has a good introduction to the flexible boxes model.

Html – CSS div element – how to show horizontal scroll bars only

You shouldn't get both horizontal and vertical scrollbars unless you make the content large enough to require them.

However you typically do in IE due to a bug. Check in other browsers (Firefox etc.) to find out whether it is in fact only IE that is doing it.

IE6-7 (amongst other browsers) supports the proposed CSS3 extension to set scrollbars independently, which you could use to suppress the vertical scrollbar:

overflow: auto;
overflow-y: hidden;

You may also need to add for IE8:

-ms-overflow-y: hidden;

as Microsoft are threatening to move all pre-CR-standard properties into their own ‘-ms’ box in IE8 Standards Mode. (This would have made sense if they'd always done it that way, but is rather an inconvenience for everyone now.)

On the other hand it's entirely possible IE8 will have fixed the bug anyway.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Html – Make a div fill the height of the remaining screen space

2015 update: the flexbox approach

Working example

Html – CSS div element – how to show horizontal scroll bars only

Related Topic