1. Introduction
In CSS Level 1 [CSS1], placing more content than would fit inside an element with a specified size was generally an authoring error. Doing so caused the content to extend outside the bounds of the element, which would likely cause that content to overlap with other elements.
CSS Level 2 [CSS21] introduced the overflow property, which allows authors to have overflow be handled by scrolling, which means it is no longer an authoring error. It also allows authors to specify that overflow is handled by clipping, which makes sense when the author’s intent is that the content not be shown.
This specification introduces the long-standing de-facto overflow-x and overflow-y properties, and defines overflow handling more fully.
[Something something max-lines.]
2. Types of overflow
CSS uses the term overflow to describe the contents of a box that extend outside one of that box’s edges (i.e., its content edge, padding edge, border edge, or margin edge). The term might be interpreted as elements or features that cause this overflow, the non-rectangular region occupied by these features, or, more commonly, the minimal rectangle that bounds that region. A box’s overflow is computed based on the layout and styling of the box itself and of all descendants whose containing block chain includes the box.
In most cases, overflow can be computed for any box from the bounds and properties of that box itself, plus the overflow of each of its children. However, this is not always the case; for example, when transform-style: preserve-3d [CSS3-TRANSFORMS] is used on some of the children, any of their descendants with transform-style: preserve-3d must also be examined.
There are two different types of overflow, which are used for different purposes by the UA:
2.1. Ink overflow
The ink overflow of a box is the part of that box and its contents that creates a visual effect outside of the box’s border box. Ink overflow is the overflow of painting effects defined to not affect layout or otherwise extend the scrollable overflow region, such as box shadows, border images, text decoration, overhanging glyphs (with negative side bearings, or with ascenders/descenders extending outside the em box), outlines, etc.
Since some effects in CSS (for example, the blurs in text-shadow [CSS3TEXT] and box-shadow [CSS3BG]) do not define what visual extent they cover, the extent of the ink overflow is undefined.
The ink overflow region is the non-rectangular area occupied by the ink overflow, and the ink overflow rectangle is the minimal rectangle whose axis is aligned to the box’s axes and contains the ink overflow region. Note that the ink overflow rectangle is a rectangle in the box’s coordinate system, but might be non-rectangular in other coordinate systems due to transforms [CSS3-TRANSFORMS].
2.2. Scrollable overflow
The scrollable overflow of a box is the set of things extending outside of that box’s padding edge for which a scrolling mechanism needs to be provided.
The scrollable overflow region is the non-rectangular region occupied by the scrollable overflow, and the scrollable overflow rectangle is the minimal rectangle whose axis is aligned to the box’s axes and contains the scrollable overflow region.
The scrollable overflow region is the union of:
- the box’s own content and padding areas
- all line boxes directly contained by the box
-
the border boxes
of all boxes for which it is the containing block,
accounting for transforms by projecting each box onto
the plane of the element that establishes its 3D rendering context. [CSS3-TRANSFORMS]
Is this description of handling transforms sufficiently accurate?
-
the scrollable overflow regions of all of the above boxes
(accounting for transforms as described above),
provided they themselves have overflow: visible (i.e. do not themselves trap the overflow)
and that scrollable overflow is not already clipped
(e.g. by the clip property or the contain property).
Note: The mask-* properties [CSS-MASKING-1] do not affect the scrollable overflow region.
Need to evaluate compat of honoring or ignoring clip and clip-path.
-
Optionally,
additional padding on the end-edge sides,
corresponding to the end-side padding of the scroll container, such that the end edges of its in-flow content
coincide with the end edges of its content area
when scrolled to the end.
It’s not yet clear if including the end-side padding in the scrollable layer is Web-compatible, so this clause is under investigation. It appears that Chrome and Safari include such padding in the block axis; and the behavior in the inline axis is not clear.
The UA may additionally include the margin areas of boxes for which it is the containing block. The conditions under which such margin areas are included is undefined in this level. This needs further testing and investigation; is therefore deferred in this draft.
Note: The scrollable overflow rectangle is always a rectangle in the box’s own coordinate system, but might be non-rectangular in other coordinate systems due to transforms [CSS3-TRANSFORMS]. This means scrollbars can sometimes appear when not actually necessary.
3. Scrollable Overflow: the overflow-x, overflow-y, and overflow properties
These properties specify whether a box’s content (including any ink overflow) is clipped to its padding edge, and if so, whether it is a scroll container that allows the user to scroll clipped parts of its scrollable overflow region into view. The visual viewport of the scroll container (through which the scrollable overflow region can be viewed) coincides with its padding box, and is called the scrollport.
| Name: | overflow-x, overflow-y |
|---|---|
| Value: | visible | | clip | scroll | auto |
| Initial: | visible |
| Applies to: | block containers [CSS21], flex containers [CSS3-FLEXBOX], and grid containers [CSS3-GRID-LAYOUT] |
| Inherited: | no |
| Percentages: | N/A |
| Media: | visual |
| Computed value: | as specified, except with visible computing to auto if one of overflow-x or overflow-y is not visible |
| Animatable: | no |
The overflow-x property specifies the handling of overflow in the horizontal direction (i.e., overflow from the left and right sides of the box), and the overflow-y property specifies the handling of overflow in the vertical direction (i.e., overflow from the top and bottom sides of the box).
| Name: | overflow |
|---|---|
| Value: | visible | | clip | scroll | auto |
| Initial: | see individual properties |
| Applies to: | block containers [CSS21], flex containers [CSS3-FLEXBOX], and grid containers [CSS3-GRID-LAYOUT] |
| Inherited: | no |
| Percentages: | N/A |
| Media: | visual |
| Computed value: | see individual properties |
| Animatable: | no |
| Canonical order: | per grammar |
The overflow property is a shorthand property that sets the specified values of both overflow-x and overflow-y to the value specified for overflow.
Values have the following meanings:
- visible
- There is no special handling of overflow, that is, it may be rendered outside the box. The box is not a scroll container.
- hidden
- This value indicates that the box’s content is clipped to its padding box and that no scrolling user interface should be provided by the UA to view the content outside the clipping region. However, the content may still be scrolled programatically, for example using the mechanisms defined in [CSSOM-VIEW], and the box is therefore still a scroll container.
- clip
- Like hidden, this value indicates that the box’s content is clipped to its padding box and that no scrolling user interface should be provided by the UA to view the content outside the clipping region. In addition, unlike overflow: hidden which still allows programmatic scrolling, overflow: clip forbids scrolling entirely, through any mechanism, and therefore the box is not a scroll container.
- scroll
- This value indicates that the content is clipped to the padding box, but can be scrolled into view (and therefore the box is a scroll container). Furthermore, if the user agent uses a scrolling mechanism that is visible on the screen (such as a scroll bar or a panner), that mechanism should be displayed whether or not any of its content is clipped. This avoids any problem with scrollbars appearing and disappearing in a dynamic environment. When this value is specified and the target medium is print, overflowing content may be printed.
- auto
- This value indicates that the box’s content is clipped to the padding box, but can be scrolled into view (and therefore the box is a scroll container). However, if the user agent uses a scrolling mechanism that is visible on the screen (such as a scroll bar or a panner), that mechanism should only be displayed if there is overflow.
If the computed value of overflow on a block box is not visible, it creates a new block formatting context for its content.
3.1. Overflow Value Propagation
UAs must apply the overflow property
set on the root element to the viewport.
For HTML UAs,
if this would result in the viewport having visible overflow,
the UA must instead apply the overflow property
set on the body element to the viewport.
In either case,
the used value of overflow for the element from which the value is propagated
must evaluate to visible.
If this application would result in the viewport having visible overflow, the UA must instead treat the viewport as having auto overflow.
3.2. Scrollbars and Layout
In the case of a scrollbar being placed on an edge of the element’s box, it should be inserted between the inner border edge and the outer padding edge. Any space taken up by the scrollbars should be taken out of (subtracted from the dimensions of) the containing block formed by the element with the scrollbars.
import examples from [CSS3-BOX].
3.3. Scrolling Origin, Direction, and Restriction
The initial scroll position, that is, the initial position of the box’s scrollable overflow region with respect to its border box, prior to any user or programmatic scrolling that changes it, is dependent on the box’s writing mode, and is by default the block-start/inline-start edge of the box’s padding edge. However, the align-content and justify-content properties [CSS-ALIGN-3] can be used to change this.
Due to Web-compatibility constraints (caused by authors exploiting legacy bugs to surreptitiously hide content from visual readers but not search engines and/or speech output), UAs must clip the scrollable overflow region of scroll containers on the block-start and inline-start sides of the box (thereby behaving as if they had no scrollable overflow on that side).
The viewport uses the principal writing mode for these calculations.
[CSS3-MARQUEE] describes an overflow-style property, but it has not picked up implementation experience that the working group is aware of. Should this document treat overflow-style as a defunct proposal, or should this document describe the overflow-style property and attempt to revive it, despite that implementations have implemented overflow-x and overflow-y instead?
4. Limiting Number of Visible Text Lines: the max-lines property
| Name: | max-lines |
|---|---|
| Value: | none | <integer> |
| Initial: | none |
| Applies to: | all non-inline elements |
| Inherited: | no |
| Percentages: | N/A |
| Media: | visual |
| Computed value: | specified value |
| Animatable: | as integer |
Add back max-lines, so we can kill the unspecified WebKit feature that does this poorly.
5. Overflow in static media
This specification should define useful behavior for all values of overflow in static media (such as print). Current implementation behavior is quite poor and produces unexpected results when authors have not considered what will happen when the content they produce for interactive media is printed.
6. Privacy and Security Considerations
This specification introduces no new privacy or security concerns.
Acknowledgments
Thanks especially to the feedback from Rossen Atanassov, Bert Bos, Tantek Çelik, John Daggett, fantasai, Daniel Glazman, Vincent Hardy, Håkon Wium Lie, Peter Linss, Robert O’Callahan, Florian Rivoal, Alan Stearns, Steve Zilles, and all the rest of the www-style community.