How to prevent buttons from moving on click

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Recently I just finished a geo ip api application as a project for the JavaScript course I am teaching, and I couldn’t get my buttons to stop moving when I clicked them. I quickly figured out that it was the disappearance of the browser window scrollbar that was causing the buttons to move! When there was no data rendered to the page, there was no overflow on the Y axis, so by default, there was no scrollbar. But when I clicked on the "Find me" button that triggered the getGeoIp() function, which resulted in the appearance of the data on the page, the scrollbar appeared. The toggling of the appearance and disappearance of the browser window scrollbar was what caused the buttons to move.

Setting the body element to

body {
    overflow-y: scroll;
}

took care of the moving buttons issue.

Then I decided that I wanted to add the overflow-y property to the div with the .wrapper class, which contains the api data fetched from the Free IP Geolocation API I am using in my application called free-geo-ip, because I like the idea of making it easier for my users to scroll through a smaller area, thereby making the actual height of the browser window shorter. I love using inner scrollbars, especially when rendering lists to a page in my applications.

But setting the body to overflow-y: scroll created a new issue! First of all, I set an inner scrollbar to my div with the .wrapper class with the overflow-y property set to "auto". However, I also had the overflow-y property on my body element set to scroll. This meant that initially, even though I was hiding the wrapper div and everything inside it, the scrollbar of the wrapper div was NOT hidden in Chrome.

As a result of this situation, I had to create some extra conditions in my JavaScript based on my CSS styling in my external stylesheet AND the CSS in JS styling in my main.js file, to make sure that my inner scrollbar did not initially appear when there was no data rendered to the page. The data is only rendered to the page when the Find me! button is clicked.

At first, when I hid my div with the .wrapper class, the scrollbar still showed up locally in Safari and Chrome. It did not show up in Firefox. In Firefox, the scrollbar, along with everything residing in the div with the .wrapper class, was initially hidden.

This signaled to me that I would have to do some cross-browser compatibility styling. So I looked into the issue of initially hiding the scrollbar of the div with the .wrapper class when the page was supposed to be completely empty except for the Find me! button, the Refresh me! button, and the site footer. I found a great article on CSS Tricks about styling scrollbars, which I have included in the Related Resources section of this podcast post.

First I did the following in my main.scss/main.css file(s):

body {
    /* So that there is always a browser window scrollbar to make sure that the find me and refresh me buttons do not move on click. */
    overflow-y: scroll;
}

.wrapper {
    /* Set a height to .wrapper div that is shorter than the actual wrapper div height when the data is rendered to the page, to ensure that there will always be overflow on the Y axis when the data renders to the page. */
    height: 350px;
    /* This is to make sure that a scrollbar appears when there is overflow on the Y axis. */
    overflow-y: auto;
}

/* Scrollbar related styling */
/* Needed for scrollbar styling without -webkit pseudo-class to ensure that the scrollbar-thumb styling is applied to the .wrapper div */
.scrollbar-thumb {
    background-color: #16174b;
    outline: 1px solid slategrey;
    border-radius: 15px;
}

/* end scrollbar styling without -webkit pseudo-class*/
/* Default/starting state of -webkit-scrollbar styling when there is no data on the page - hides the scrollbar */
.wrapper::-webkit-scrollbar {
    width: 0px;
    background: transparent;
}

/* .show-scrollbar class added when .backgroundSkyblue class added - shows the scrollbar for the .wrapper class */
.show-scrollbar::-webkit-scrollbar {
    width: 1rem;
    background: white;
}

/* ::-webkit-scrollbar-track-piece is the top-most layer of the progress bar not covered by the draggable scrolling element (thumb). */
.show-scrollbar::-webkit-scrollbar-track-piece {
    box-shadow: inset 0 0 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
}

/* The -webkit-scrollbar-track styling addressed the albeit small but empty apace below the scrollbar progress bar. */
.show-scrollbar::-webkit-scrollbar-track {
    box-shadow: inset 0 0 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
}

.show-scrollbar::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb {
    background-color: #16174b;
    outline: 1px solid slategrey;
    border-radius: 15px;
}

/* the .backgroundSkyblue class added to div with .wrapper class in if/else statement if there is no .backgroundSkyblue class present. Causes switch from initial default orange background color to sky blue background color. And when the background is sky blue, the div.wrapper scrollbar appears. */
.backgroundSkyblue {
    background: #8bd3fb;
}

All the above that I described now was created after figuring out which classes I needed to add with which CSS selectors in corresponding conditions, and which classes I needed to remove in corresponding conditions in my JavaScript. Once I figured those logistics out, then I could create the necessary CSS styles in my external stylesheet, main.scss/main.css. I used node-sass for this project!

I added the following JavaScript in my main.js file to make the div with the .wrapper class AND its scrollbar toggle from visible to invisible based on certain conditions which included CSS in JS:

/* main.js Need to be able to query the body element, and the wrapper div with a class of ".wrapper". */

const body = document.querySelector('body')
const wrapper = document.querySelector('.wrapper')

Resulting if/else if/else statement:

if (body.className !== 'backgroundSkyblue') {
    body.classList.add('backgroundSkyblue')
    wrapper.classList.add('show-scrollbar')
} else if (body.className === 'backgroundSkyblue') {
    body.classList.remove('backgroundSkyblue')
    body.style.backgroundColor = '#f08850'
    wrapper.style.display = 'none'
    wrapper.classList.remove('.show-scrollbar')
} else {
    body.classList.add('backgroundSkyblue')
    wrapper.style.display = 'block'
    wrapper.classList.add('.show-scrollbar')
}

The initial if statement states that if the body element does NOT initially have a className of backgroundSkyblue (which it does NOT), add the class backgroundSkyblue to the body element, and add the class .show-scrollbar to the div with the class .wrapper.

The following else if statement states that if the body element contains the className backgroundSkyblue, remove the backgroundSkyblue class from the body element. Then add back the initial background-color of the body element that is set to the body element in main.scss/main.css. Why can this be done? Because whenever you add CSS styling via JavaScript, it overrides the values of the corresponding css selector(s) present in the external stylesheet.

Since I wanted this condition to result in the hiding of the div with the .wrapper class and its scrollbar, I added the display property on the div with the .wrapper class dynamically using the JavaScript style property, and setting its value to none. However, as explained earlier, I also had to add browser-compatibility styling to my CSS. Therefore, I had to remove the .show-scrollbar class.

The (final) else statement is what creates a toggle between initial invisibility of the div with the .wrapper class and the subsequent visibility of the div with the .wrapper class. Sometimes when you want to toggle between one condition and another, if the required conditions are more complex, an if/else statement won’t necessarily suffice. You end up with an if/else if/else statement instead. That way you are able to cover all your bases and create a circular condition that persists indefinitely! In this case, the else statement is saying, otherwise, just add the .backgroundSkyblue class to the div with the .wrapper class, set the display property on the div with the .wrapper class to block, because in the else/if statement, I set the display property of the div with the .wrapper class to none. Lastly, I needed to add back the .show-scrollbar class to the div with the .wrapper class, because I added back the class .backgroundSkyblue to it, signaling that not only should the div with the .wrapper class be visible, but the scrollbar for the div with the .wrapper class should be visible as well.

To view this application in action, please visit the Free Geo IP application on Github gh-pages. To view the source code, please visit the geo-ip-app repository on Github.

I will be embedding this episode of Plugging in The Holes along with a transcript in the form of a post on interglobalmedianetwork.com for your hearing and reading pleasure. I will be including the related resource links mentioned in the podcast of course. Always do. Bye for now!

Related Resources

• scrollbar on CSS Tricks
• Geo Ip App Source Code on Github
• Geo Ip App Site on Github gh-pages