IPhone-style scrollbar in auto-input / output web application

Question

I am creating a web application and really love iPhone-style scrollbars that automatically fade in and out. I only saw it on iOS products, but now it seems that Facebook has implemented it in the chat contact list.

Why do I like it so much? It automatically disappears, so it is less intrusive and can save a significant amount of space. When it is displayed, it is efficiently inside the div, not around it, making efficient use of space again.

Any ideas on how to do this? This is not the Matteo Spinelli "iScroll", which uses the "normal" scroll bar (which is for iOS products, of course, iOS-style) for use in a div.

I tried to use the Journery Jonathan Azoff Overscroll plugin, but I can't seem to work correctly. I managed to get the scroll bars to automatically disappear and exit automatically in the mouseenter (like Facebook), but the scroll behavior is different between browsers (and it seems to override the browser scroll behavior both in speed and inertia on OSX). A quick look at the source code seems to be consistent with this conclusion.

Are there any other plugins / libraries that I can use to accurately support browser scroll behavior, but have scroll bars that automatically disappear and look like iOS style?

EDIT : decided to do it myself. See answer below.

Answer 1

Thank you for your input, Sun Tzu. I took a look at tinyscroll and it is pretty nice, but I decided that it is not quite enough. In particular, in Firefox (on my macbook), I lose smooth scrolling (and scrolling ends up being in discrete / quantized amounts). A quick glance at the code suggests that this is due to the way they manually process input events and trigger scrolling in accordance with these events. I would really like to keep absolutely scrolling performance and behavior.

So, I wrote my own jQuery plugin, innerscroll . I open it on github . Demo is also available here . Just include my file and add 3 lines of code:

$('#content').innerscroll({ destination: $('#wrapper') }); 

where content is the element that overflows. Some little extra tweaking is that you need to create a parent wrapper element for content with almost the same dimensions, but only slightly smaller width (to hide the content native scrollbar). wrapper also hosts a new scrollbar.

I am sure there are errors. Any comments, criticism or suggestions will be appreciated.

Answer 2

Forgive me for taking so long to answer such a simple question ... This is close to what I think you are looking for http://baijs.nl/tinyscrollbar/ . Then for attenuation just use a simple function like this.

HTML first

 <div id="scrollbar1" style="visibility: hidden"> <div class="scrollbar"><div class="track"><div class="thumb"><div class="end"></div></div></div></div> <div class="viewport"> <div class="overview"> <h3>Magnis dis parturient montes</h3> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut vitae velit at velit pretium sodales. Maecenas egestas imperdiet mauris, vel elementum turpis iaculis eu. Duis egestas augue quis ante ornare eu tincidunt magna interdum. Vestibulum posuere risus non ipsum sollicitudin quis viverra ante feugiat. Pellentesque non faucibus lorem. Nunc tincidunt diam nec risus ornare quis porttitor enim pretium. Ut adipiscing tempor massa, a ullamcorper massa bibendum at. Suspendisse potenti. In vestibulum enim orci, nec consequat turpis. Suspendisse sit amet tellus a quam volutpat porta. Mauris ornare augue ut diam tincidunt elementum. Vivamus commodo dapibus est, a gravida lorem pharetra eu. Maecenas ultrices cursus tellus sed congue. Cras nec nulla erat.</p> <p>Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Pellentesque eget mauris libero. Nulla sit amet felis in sem posuere laoreet ut quis elit. Aenean mauris massa, pretium non bibendum eget, elementum sed nibh. Nulla ac felis et purus adipiscing rutrum. Pellentesque a bibendum sapien. Vivamus erat quam, gravida sed ultricies ac, scelerisque sed velit. Integer mollis urna sit amet ligula aliquam ac sodales arcu euismod. Fusce fermentum augue in nulla cursus non fermentum lorem semper. Quisque eu auctor lacus. Donec justo justo, mollis vel tempor vitae, consequat eget velit.</p> <p>Vivamus sed tellus quis orci dignissim scelerisque nec vitae est. Duis et elit ipsum. Aliquam pharetra auctor felis tempus tempor. Vivamus turpis dui, sollicitudin eget rhoncus in, luctus vel felis. Curabitur ultricies dictum justo at luctus. Nullam et quam et massa eleifend sollicitudin. Nulla mauris purus, sagittis id egestas eu, pellentesque et mi. Donec bibendum cursus nisi eget consequat. Nunc sit amet commodo metus. Integer consectetur lacus ac libero adipiscing ut tristique est viverra. Maecenas quam nibh, molestie nec pretium interdum, porta vitae magna. Maecenas at ligula eget neque imperdiet faucibus malesuada sed ipsum. Nulla auctor ligula sed nisl adipiscing vulputate. Curabitur ut ligula sed velit pharetra fringilla. Cras eu luctus est. Aliquam ac urna dui, eu rhoncus nibh. Nam id leo nisi, vel viverra nunc. Duis egestas pellentesque lectus, a placerat dolor egestas in. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Donec vitae ipsum non est iaculis suscipit.</p> <h3>Adipiscing risus </h3> <p>Quisque vel felis ligula. Cras viverra sapien auctor ante porta a tincidunt quam pulvinar. Nunc facilisis, enim id volutpat sodales, leo ipsum accumsan diam, eu adipiscing risus nisi eu quam. Ut in tortor vitae elit condimentum posuere vel et erat. Duis at fringilla dolor. Vivamus sem tellus, porttitor non imperdiet et, rutrum id nisl. Nunc semper facilisis porta. Curabitur ornare metus nec sapien molestie in mattis lorem ullamcorper. Ut congue, purus ac suscipit suscipit, magna diam sodales metus, tincidunt imperdiet diam odio non diam. Ut mollis lobortis vulputate. Nam tortor tortor, dictum sit amet porttitor sit amet, faucibus eu sem. Curabitur aliquam nisl sed est semper a fringilla velit porta. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Vestibulum in sapien id nulla volutpat sodales ac bibendum magna. Cras sollicitudin, massa at sodales sodales, lacus tortor vestibulum massa, eu consequat dui nulla et ipsum.</p> <p>Aliquam accumsan aliquam urna, id vulputate ante posuere eu. Nullam pretium convallis tincidunt. Duis vitae odio arcu, ut fringilla enim. Nam ante eros, vestibulum sit amet rhoncus et, vehicula quis tellus. Curabitur sed iaculis odio. Praesent vitae ligula id tortor ornare luctus. Integer placerat urna non ligula sollicitudin vestibulum. Nunc vestibulum auctor massa, at varius nibh scelerisque eget. Aliquam convallis, nunc non laoreet mollis, neque est mattis nisl, nec accumsan velit nunc ut arcu. Donec quis est mauris, eu auctor nulla. Fusce leo diam, tempus a varius sit amet, auctor ac metus. Nam turpis nulla, fermentum in rhoncus et, auctor id sem. Aliquam id libero eu neque elementum lobortis nec et odio.</p> </div> </div> </div> 

Then the jQuery function to make it disappear in:

 $(function() { $("#scrollbar1").bind('hover', function() { // On hover fade in $(this).fadeIn(1000); }); $("#scrollbar1").bind('mouseout', function() { // On mouseout fade out $(this).fadeOut(1000); }); }); 

Answer 3

I found Nanoscroller JS the most reliable scrollbar replacement that supports this style. http://jamesflorentino.github.com/nanoScrollerJS/