Stop fixed position at footer

Question

I'm looking for a solution to the popular issue of stopping a fixed object at the footer of the page.

I basically have a fixed "share" box in the bottom left corner of the screen and I don't want it to scroll over the footer, so I need it to stop about 10px above the footer.

I've looked at other questions here as well as others. The closest/most simple demo I could find is http://jsfiddle.net/bryanjamesross/VtPcm/ but I couldn't get it to work with my situation.

Here's the html for the share box:

    <div id="social-float">
        <div class="sf-twitter">
            ...
        </div>

        <div class="sf-facebook">
            ...
        </div>

        <div class="sf-plusone">
            ...
        </div>
    </div>

...and the CSS:

#social-float{
position: fixed;
bottom: 10px;
left: 10px;
width: 55px;
padding: 10px 5px;
text-align: center;
background-color: #fff;
border: 5px solid #ccd0d5;
-webkit-border-radius: 2px;
-moz-border-radius: 2px;
border-radius: 2px;
display: none;
}

The footer is #footer and it doesn't have a fixed height, if that makes any difference.

If someone could assist me in creating a simple jQuery solution for this, I'd much appreciate it!

Solution 1

Live demo

first, check its offset every time you scroll the page

$(document).scroll(function() {
    checkOffset();
});

and make its position absolute if it has been downed under 10px before the footer.

function checkOffset() {
    if($('#social-float').offset().top + $('#social-float').height() 
                                           >= $('#footer').offset().top - 10)
        $('#social-float').css('position', 'absolute');
    if($(document).scrollTop() + window.innerHeight < $('#footer').offset().top)
        $('#social-float').css('position', 'fixed'); // restore when you scroll up
}

notice that #social-float's parent should be sibling of the footer

<div class="social-float-parent">
    <div id="social-float">
        something...
    </div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
</div>

good luck :)

Solution 2

I've just solved this problem on a site I'm working on, and thought I would share it in the hope it helps someone.

My solution takes the distance from the footer to the top of the page - if the user has scrolled further than this, it pulls the sidebar back up with a negative margin.

$(window).scroll(() => { 
  // Distance from top of document to top of footer.
  topOfFooter = $('#footer').position().top;
  // Distance user has scrolled from top, adjusted to take in height of sidebar (570 pixels inc. padding).
  scrollDistanceFromTopOfDoc = $(document).scrollTop() + 570;
  // Difference between the two.
  scrollDistanceFromTopOfFooter = scrollDistanceFromTopOfDoc - topOfFooter;

  // If user has scrolled further than footer,
  // pull sidebar up using a negative margin.
  if (scrollDistanceFromTopOfDoc > topOfFooter) {
    $('#cart').css('margin-top',  0 - scrollDistanceFromTopOfFooter);
  } else  {
    $('#cart').css('margin-top', 0);
  }
});

Solution 3

Here is the @Sang solution but without Jquery.

var socialFloat = document.querySelector('#social-float');
var footer = document.querySelector('#footer');

function checkOffset() {
  function getRectTop(el){
    var rect = el.getBoundingClientRect();
    return rect.top;
  }
  
  if((getRectTop(socialFloat) + document.body.scrollTop) + socialFloat.offsetHeight >= (getRectTop(footer) + document.body.scrollTop) - 10)
    socialFloat.style.position = 'absolute';
  if(document.body.scrollTop + window.innerHeight < (getRectTop(footer) + document.body.scrollTop))
    socialFloat.style.position = 'fixed'; // restore when you scroll up
  
  socialFloat.innerHTML = document.body.scrollTop + window.innerHeight;
}

document.addEventListener("scroll", function(){
  checkOffset();
});

div.social-float-parent { width: 100%; height: 1000px; background: #f8f8f8; position: relative; }
div#social-float { width: 200px; position: fixed; bottom: 10px; background: #777; }
div#footer { width: 100%; height: 200px; background: #eee; }

<div class="social-float-parent">
    <div id="social-float">
        float...
    </div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
</div>

Solution 4

I ran into this same issue recently, posted the my solution also here: Preventing element from displaying on top of footer when using position:fixed

You can achieve a solution leveraging the position property of the element with jQuery, switching between the default value (static for divs), fixed and absolute. You will also need a container element for your fixed element. Finally, in order to prevent the fixed element to go over the footer, this container element can't be the parent of the footer.

The javascript part involves calculating the distance in pixels between your fixed element and the top of the document, and comparing it with the current vertical position of the scrollbar relatively to the window object (i.e. the number of pixels above that are hidden from the visible area of the page) every time the user scrolls the page. When, on scrolling down, the fixed element is about to disappear above, we change its position to fixed and stick on top of the page.

This causes the fixed element to go over the footer when we scroll to the bottom, especially if the browser window is small. Therefore, we will calculate the distance in pixels of the footer from the top of the document and compare it with the height of the fixed element plus the vertical position of the scrollbar: when the fixed element is about to go over the footer, we will change its position to absolute and stick at the bottom, just over the footer.

Here's a generic example.

The HTML structure:

<div id="content">
    <div id="leftcolumn">
        <div class="fixed-element">
            This is fixed 
        </div>
    </div>
    <div id="rightcolumn">Main content here</div>
    <div id="footer"> The footer </div>
</div>  

The CSS:

#leftcolumn {
    position: relative;
}
.fixed-element {
    width: 180px;
}
.fixed-element.fixed {
    position: fixed;
    top: 20px;
}
.fixed-element.bottom {
    position: absolute;
    bottom: 356px; /* Height of the footer element, plus some extra pixels if needed */
}

The JS:

// Position of fixed element from top of the document
var fixedElementOffset = $('.fixed-element').offset().top;
// Position of footer element from top of the document.
// You can add extra distance from the bottom if needed,
// must match with the bottom property in CSS
var footerOffset = $('#footer').offset().top - 36;

var fixedElementHeight = $('.fixed-element').height(); 

// Check every time the user scrolls
$(window).scroll(function (event) {

    // Y position of the vertical scrollbar
    var y = $(this).scrollTop();

    if ( y >= fixedElementOffset && ( y + fixedElementHeight ) < footerOffset ) {
        $('.fixed-element').addClass('fixed');
        $('.fixed-element').removeClass('bottom');          
    }
    else if ( y >= fixedElementOffset && ( y + fixedElementHeight ) >= footerOffset ) {
        $('.fixed-element').removeClass('fixed');           
        $('.fixed-element').addClass('bottom');
    }
    else {
        $('.fixed-element').removeClass('fixed bottom');
    }

 });

Solution 5

I've made some changes to the second most popular answer as i found this worked better for me. The changes use window.innerHeight as it is more dynamic than adding your own height for the nav (above used + 570). this allows the code to work on mobile, tablet and desktop dynamicly.

$(window).scroll(() => {
            //Distance from top fo document to top of footer
            topOfFooter = $('#footer').position().top;
             // Distance user has scrolled from top + windows inner height
             scrollDistanceFromTopOfDoc = $(document).scrollTop() + window.innerHeight;
             // Difference between the two.
             scrollDistanceFromTopOfFooter = scrollDistanceFromTopOfDoc - topOfFooter; 
            // If user has scrolled further than footer,
              if (scrollDistanceFromTopOfDoc > topOfFooter) {
                // add margin-bottom so button stays above footer.
                $('#floating-button').css('margin-bottom',  0 + scrollDistanceFromTopOfFooter);
              } else  {
                // remove margin-bottom so button goes back to the bottom of the page
                $('#floating-button').css('margin-bottom', 0);
              }
            });

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