Q: jQuery TinyScrollbar doesn’t work in hidden container or tab or div : Why ?

Answer:

I think this is problem  with jquery or as how the DOM works. When any parent div is hidden using css property display:block;  jquery can not determine the width, height etc for any child element (example div)  and this also happens for jquery tinyscrollbar plugin. I wasted almost 4/5 hours to get what the hell is happening as I was trying to add custom scrollbar in a tabber, tab tab tab … pa pa pa. But it was not working for inactive tabs (divs)

Solutions: After debuging jquerytinyscrollbar plugin’s js code I found

for method “update” it had code like

[code language=”javascript”]
oViewport[ options.axis ] = oViewport.obj[0][ ‘offset’+ sSize ];
oContent[ options.axis ] = oContent.obj[0][ ‘scroll’+ sSize ];
[/code]

and for hidden tab those oViewport.obj[0][ ‘offset’+ sSize ] and oContent.obj[0][ ‘scroll’+ sSize ] gives wrong height or width or just 0. So tha scrolling ratio doesn’t work which is calculated just after that like
[code language=”javascript”]
oContent.ratio = oViewport[ options.axis ] / oContent[ options.axis ];
[/code]

What we tried is we used another jquery plugin named jquery Actual which helps to get actual attributes of hidden element.
http://dreamerslab.com/blog/en/get-hidden-elements-width-and-height-with-jquery/

https://github.com/dreamerslab/jquery.actual/blob/master/jquery.actual.js

So add the jquery actual plugin first then include the jquery tinyscrollbar plugin. Now you need to be little brave to modify the jquery tinyscrollbar plugin.
So now update the update method like this

[code language=”javascript”]
oViewport[ options.axis ] = oViewport.obj[0][ ‘offset’+ sSize ];
oContent[ options.axis ] = oContent.obj[0][ ‘scroll’+ sSize ];

sSizecb = sAxis ? ‘width’ : ‘height’;
var oViewportaxis = $(oWrapper).children(‘div.viewport’).actual(sSizecb) ;
var oContentaxis = $(oWrapper).children(‘div.viewport’).children(‘div.overview’).actual(sSizecb) ;

oViewport[ options.axis ] = oViewportaxis;
oContent[ options.axis ] = oContentaxis;

[/code]

Download the full source code from here.

Also while adding tinyscrollbar I used some extra care, for inactive tabs more careeeeeeeeeeee.

Here are more sample codes if that helps ,
Please note that for making the scrollbar compatible with tinyscrollbar we need to add some extra div like “overview”

[code language=”javascript”]
jQuery(document).ready(function(){
//height is asumed 200px
//for scrollbar one, element id scrollbar1
jQuery(‘#scrollbar1’).children().wrapAll(‘<div class="viewport"><div class="overview"></div></div>’);
jQuery(‘#scrollbar1’).prepend(‘<div class="scrollbar"><div class="track"><div class="thumb"><div class="end"></div></div></div></div>’);
jQuery(‘#scrollbar1’).tinyscrollbarcb();

for scrollbar two , element id scrollbar2,
jQuery(‘#scrollbar2’).children().wrapAll(‘<div class="viewport"><div class="overview"></div></div>’);
jQuery(‘#scrollbar2’).prepend(‘<div class="scrollbar"><div class="track"><div class="thumb"><div class="end"></div></div></div></div>’);

jQuery(‘#scrollbar2’).children(‘div.viewport’).css({height:"200px"});
jQuery(‘#scrollbar2’).children(‘div.scrollbar’).css({height:"200px"});

jQuery(‘#scrollbar2’).children(‘div.scrollbar’).children(‘div.track’).css({height:"200px"});
jQuery(‘#scrollbar2’).tinyscrollbarcb();

});
[/code]

Thanks for reading.