simplebar

What is simplebar?

SimpleBar is a custom scrollbar library that aims to provide a simple and lightweight solution for creating custom scrollbars that look consistent across different browsers and platforms. It allows you to style the scrollbar to match your application's design while maintaining native scrolling performance.

What are simplebar's main functionalities?

Custom Scrollbars

SimpleBar allows you to create custom scrollbars by adding a `data-simplebar` attribute to your HTML elements. This will replace the default scrollbar with a custom one that you can style using CSS.

<div data-simplebar style="max-height: 300px;">
  Your content here
</div>

Auto-Hiding Scrollbars

You can control the auto-hide behavior of the scrollbar by setting the `data-simplebar-auto-hide` attribute to `false`. This will keep the scrollbar visible at all times.

<div data-simplebar-auto-hide="false" style="max-height: 300px;">
  Your content here
</div>

RTL Support

SimpleBar supports right-to-left (RTL) text direction. You can enable this by setting the `data-simplebar-direction` attribute to `rtl`.

<div data-simplebar-direction="rtl" style="max-height: 300px;">
  Your content here
</div>

Custom Scrollbar Styles

You can customize the appearance of the scrollbar by targeting the `.simplebar-scrollbar` class in your CSS. This allows you to change the color, width, and other styles of the scrollbar.

<style>
  .simplebar-scrollbar::before {
    background-color: #3498db;
  }
</style>
<div data-simplebar style="max-height: 300px;">
  Your content here
</div>

Other packages similar to simplebar

perfect-scrollbar

Perfect Scrollbar is a similar library that provides custom scrollbars with a focus on performance and simplicity. It offers more customization options and better support for touch devices compared to SimpleBar.

react-custom-scrollbars

React Custom Scrollbars is a React-specific library for creating custom scrollbars. It provides a more React-friendly API and better integration with React applications compared to SimpleBar.

README

SimpleBar

SimpleBar is a plugin that tries to solve a long time problem : how to get custom scrollbars for your web-app? SimpleBar does NOT implement a custom scroll behaviour. It keeps the native overflow: auto scroll and only replace the scrollbar visual appearance.

SimpleBar is meant to be as easy to use as possible and lightweight. If you want something more advanced I recommend https://github.com/noraesae/perfect-scrollbar

Installation

- Via npm npm install simplebar --save

Then don't forget to import both css and js in your project.

- Via <script> tag

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/simplebar@latest/dist/simplebar.css" />
<script src="https://unpkg.com/simplebar@latest/dist/simplebar.js"></script>
<!-- or -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/simplebar@latest/dist/simplebar.css">
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/simplebar@latest/dist/simplebar.js"></script>

note: you can replace @latest to the latest version (ex @2.4.3), if you want to lock to a specific version

- For Ruby On Rails

To include SimpleBar in the Ruby On Rails asset pipeline, use the simplebar-rails gem.

Usage

Set data-simplebar on the element you want your custom scrollbar. You're done.

<div data-simplebar></div>

:warning: Warning!

SimpleBar is not intended to be used on the body element! I don't recommend wrapping your entire web page inside a custom scroll as it will often affect badly the user experience (slower scroll performances compare to native body scroll, no native scroll behaviours like click on track, etc.). Do it at your own risk! SimpleBar is meant to improve the experience of internal web pages scroll: like a chat box or a small scrolling area.

---

1. Documentation
2. Browsers support
3. Demo
4. How it works
5. Changelog
6. Credits

1. Documentation

Other usages

You can start SimpleBar mannually if you need to:

new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'))

If you want to use jQuery:

new SimpleBar($('#myElement')[0])

Options

Options can be applied to the plugin during initialization:

new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'), {
    option1: value1,
    option2: value2
})

Available options are:

wrapContent (deprecated)

By default SimpleBar requires minimal markup. When initialized it will wrap a simplebar-contentelement in a div with the class simplebar-scroll-content. If you prefer to include this wrapper element directly in your markup you can switch the default behaviour off by setting the wrapContent option to false:

new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'), { wrapContent: false });

Default value is true

:warning: this option is deprecated and shouldn't be needed anymore (just prepare your DOM as you want and it should work without having to use this option).

autoHide

By default SimpleBar automatically hides the scrollbar if the user is not scrolling (it emulates Mac OSX Lion's scrollbar). You can make the scrollbar always visible by setting the autoHide option to false:

new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'), { autoHide: false });

Default value is true

You can also control the animation via CSS as it's a simple CSS opacity transition.

scrollbarMinSize

Define the minimum scrollbar size in pixels.

Default value is 10

classNames

It is possible to specify css classes to change the design of the scrollbar. To get your own styles to work refer to simplebar.css to get an idea how to setup your css.

• content represents the wrapper for the content being scrolled.
• scrollContent represents the container containing elements being scrolled.
• scrollbar defines the style of the scrollbar with which the user can interact to scroll the content.
• track styles the area surrounding the scrollbar.

classNames: {
  // defaults
  content: 'simplebar-content',
  scrollContent: 'simplebar-scroll-content',
  scrollbar: 'simplebar-scrollbar',
  track: 'simplebar-track'
}

Notifying the plugin of content changes

Note: you shouldn't need to use these functions as SimpleBar is taking care of that automatically. This is for advanced usage only.

If you later dynamically modify your content, for instance changing its height or width, or adding or removing content, you should recalculate the scrollbars like so:

var el = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
el.SimpleBar.recalculate()

Trigger programmatical scrolling

If you want to access to original scroll element, you can retrieve it via a getter :

var el = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
el.SimpleBar.getScrollElement()

Subscribe to scroll event

You can subscribe to the scroll event just like you do with native scrolling element :

var el = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
el.SimpleBar.getScrollElement().addEventListener('scroll', function(...));

Add content dynamically (ajax)

You can retrieve the element containing datas like this :

var el = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
el.SimpleBar.getContentElement();

Disable Mutation Observer

SimpleBar.removeObserver();

Non-JS fallback

SimpleBar hides the browser's default scrollbars, which obviously is undesirable if the user has JavaScript disabled. To restore the browser's scrollbars you can include the following noscript element in your document's head:

<noscript>
  <style>
    [data-simplebar] {
      overflow: auto;
    }
  </style>
</noscript>

2. Browsers support

Simplebar has been tested on the following browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, IE11.

Notice: IE10 doesn't support MutationObserver so you will still need to instantiate SimpleBar manually and call recalculate() as needed (or you can just use a polyfill for MutationObserver).

If you want to support IE9 you will need polyfills for:

• classList

Or you can use SimpleBar v1.

3. Demo

http://grsmto.github.io/simplebar/

4. How it works

SimpleBar does only one thing : replace the browser's default scrollbars with a custom CSS-styled scrollbar without losing performance. Unlike most of others plugins, SimpleBar doesn't mimic scroll with Javascript, causing janks and strange scrolling behaviours...You keep the awesomeness of native scrolling...with a custom scrollbar! Design your scrollbar like you want, with CSS, on all browsers.

For the most part SimpleBar uses the browser's native scrolling functionality, but replaces the conventional scrollbar with a custom CSS-styled scrollbar. The plugin listens for scroll events and redraws the custom scrollbar accordingly.

Key to this technique is hiding the native browser scrollbar. The scrollable element is made slightly wider/taller than its containing element, effectively hiding the scrollbar from view.

5. Changelog

See changelog here : https://github.com/Grsmto/simplebar/releases

6. Credits

Most of the credit goes to Jonathan Nicol who made the original plugin called Trackpad Scroll Emulator.

Website: http://html5up.net/

Additional contributors

Yoh Suzuki: wrapContent option