1011851 - Add CSS support for overflow-style: none or something equivalent

Status: NEW

(Core :: Layout, defect)

Description

[Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen]

This is a feature request.

People often ask for a way to change the appearance of scrollbars or to hide them completely in an element with overflow: auto. While their seems to be no standard of how scrollbars should be styleable with CSS, there is the "overflow-style" property in at least one version of the CSS3 basic box model spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-box/. Browser adoption is yet limited, only IE 10+ understands this property (albeit with a -ms-prefix), so having another browser implement this, would be helpful to have a standardized feature to hide scrollbars while still being able to scroll natively (using a touchscreen, mouse wheels, keyboard events, by a custom scrollbar, etc.).

I am willing to help as far as I am able to to resolve this bug,

Comment 1

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

It's a reasonable request, but it really should be discussed on www-style, not here. I don't know if the box spec you reference actually has consensus support in the CSS WG.

Comment 2

[Felix Miata]

Dejavu bug 252389 & bug 429573 ?

Comment 3

[Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen]

(In reply to Felix Miata from comment #2)
> Dejavu bug 252389 & bug 429573 ?

Bug 252389 and bug 429573 are about native styling of the content area on Windows. This bug is about providing a standard mean to hide scrollbars with CSS (in any version, not only on Windows) without disabling the scrolling functionality on boxes with "overflow: scroll" or "overflow: auto".

(There are a number of hacks known that hide the scrollbars from the user in current browsers, but they can be considered somewhat ugly and, worse, may have usability issues like preventing to select text, etc.; see, e.g., here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kurlak/archive/2013/11/03/hiding-vertical-scrollbars-with-pure-css-in-chrome-ie-6-firefox-opera-and-safari.aspx.)

Comment 4

[Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen]

(In reply to Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (Mozilla Corporation) from comment #1)
> It's a reasonable request, but it really should be discussed on www-style,
> not here. I don't know if the box spec you reference actually has consensus
> support in the CSS WG.

I asked this question on www-style: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2014May/0181.html. It was pointed out that the property I am asking for may better reside in CSS Overflow Module Level 3 versus CSS basic box model, where it currently is.

As it happens, the editor of the CSS Overflow Module is a Mozillian.

Comment 5

[gordon]

Has there been any update on this?  With the advent of APZ mousewheel scrolling in desktop firefox this is now more important than ever as custom javascript hacks to hide or replace the default scrollbars  now don't sit well with APZ since the main thread and compositor thread scrollTop properties aren't always in sync.

There are plenty of valid use cases where styling scrollbars or at least auto-hiding them is desirable.  For instant, take Facebooks friends list on the right hand side of the page.  A full width default scrollbar here would be obtrusive, take up unnecessary space and appear doubled up against the root document scrollbar.  Being able to style these is an important feature missing from Firefox in my opinion.

Comment 6

[gordon]

Has there been any update on this?  With the advent of APZ mousewheel scrolling in desktop firefox this is now more important than ever as custom javascript hacks to hide or replace the default scrollbars  now don't sit well with APZ since the main thread and compositor thread scrollTop properties aren't always in sync.

There are plenty of valid use cases where styling scrollbars or at least auto-hiding them is desirable.  For instant, take Facebooks friends list on the right hand side of the page.  A full width default scrollbar here would be obtrusive, take up unnecessary space and appear doubled up against the root document scrollbar.  Being able to style these is an important feature missing from Firefox in my opinion.