Smooth Div Scroll is a jQuery plugin that scrolls content horizontally left or right.

Main features

• Works on touch devices like iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones.
• Smooth scrolling - no distinct steps.
• Endless loops, if you want.
• Many different scrolling methods: touch, hot spots, mouse wheel och auto scrolling. Or combinations of these!
• Make any type of content scrollable, not just images.
• Easing options for a smoother scrolling experience.

Apart from many of the other scrolling plugins that have been written for jQuery, Smooth Div Scroll does not limit the scrolling to distinct steps. As the name of the plugin hints, scrolling is smooth. There are no other buttons or links on outside the scroller since the scrolling is done using your fingers (touch), hotspots, the mouse wheel or via auto scrolling. Unobtrusive and smooth is the key here.

Table of contents

1. How does it work?
2. Quick demo
3. Basic demo (use as template)
4. Download/GitHub
5. JSFiddle with Smooth Div Scroll for testing
6. More examples!
   • Touch scroller
   • Scrolling text
   • Scrolling mixed content
   • Scrolling mixed content with touch
   • Mini scroller
   • Running ticker
   • Multiple auto scrollers on one page (loading content through AJAX)
   • Clickable logo parade
   • Image gallery using ColorBox
7. Options
8. Altering options after initialization
9. Public methods
10. Callbacks
11. The CSS
12. Dependencies
13. Help, support and newsletter
14. Version history and license
15. About me
16. Nice sites that use Smooth Div Scroll
17. If you like this plugin

How does it work?

The basic principle behind Smooth Div Scroll is simple: let one div (scrollableArea) scroll inside another div (scrollWrapper). Two hotspots are used to trigger the actual scrolling (scrollingHotSpotLeft and scrollingHotSpotRight). You can also let the user scroll using touch, the mouse wheel or just let the scroller auto scroll. The scrollWrapper determines how much of the scrollableArea that should be visible - everything outside the scrollWrapper is hidden from view.

Quick demo

Here's a quick demo of Smooth Div Scroll in action. I've set the options so the user can scroll using the hotspots or the mouse wheel . I've also told the scroller to start auto scrolling as soon as the page loads and stop auto scrolling as soon as the user interacts with the scoller. Touch scrolling is not enabled for this particular demo - check out the touch demo if you want to try touch scrolling.

The jQuery code for this particular demo looks like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
	$(document).ready(function () {
		$("#makeMeScrollable").smoothDivScroll({
			mousewheelScrolling: "allDirections",
			manualContinuousScrolling: true,
			autoScrollingMode: "onStart"
		});
	});
</script>

In this particular demo I've set some options that override the default options:

• mousewheelScrolling: "allDirections" - The user can scroll using the mouse wheel, both horizontally and vertically (not all mice have a vertical scrolling function though)
• manualContinuousScrolling: true - The scroller becomes endless in both directions when the user scrolls manually (using the hotspots or the mousewheel).
• autoScrollingMode: "onStart" - The scroller will start auto scrolling as soon as the page has loaded and stop auto scrolling as soon as the user interacts with the scoller.

I've used only a few of all the available options. You'll find all the options described here.) In the demo above the HTML-code looks like this:

	<div id="makeMeScrollable">
		<img src="images/demo/field.jpg" alt="Field" id="field" />
		<img src="images/demo/gnome.jpg" alt="Gnome" id="gnome" />
		<img src="images/demo/pencils.jpg" alt="Pencils" id="pencils" />
		<img src="images/demo/golf.jpg" alt="Golf" id="golf" />
		<img src="images/demo/river.jpg" alt="River" id="river" />
		<img src="images/demo/train.jpg" alt="Train" id="train" />
		<img src="images/demo/leaf.jpg" alt="Leaf" id="leaf" />
		<img src="images/demo/dog.jpg" alt="Dog" id="dog" />
	</div>

As you can see there is a surrounding div with the id makeMeScrollable. This is the element that I turn into a Smooth Div Scroll. Inside this div you can put any content - not just images.

Please note that you may have to give the elements that you put inside the scrollable area some styling to make sure that they are positioned like you want them. Here's a good template to start with:

#makeMeScrollable div.scrollableArea *
{
	position: relative;
	display: block
	float: left;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	/* If you don't want the images in the scroller to be selectable, try the following
		block of code. It's just a nice feature that prevent the images from
		accidentally becoming selected/inverted when the user interacts with the scroller. */
	-webkit-user-select: none;
	-khtml-user-select: none;
	-moz-user-select: none;
	-o-user-select: none;
	user-select: none;
}

In this example there's no space between the elements inside the scrollable area. If you want a space between them, use padding and not margin since margin tends to generate errors in Internet Explorer.

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About me

My name is Thomas Kahn and I live and work in Stockholm, Sweden. I've been working as a web developer for the past fourteen years.

Currently I'm working at the advertising agency Kärnhuset in central Stockholm. When I'm not dabbling with jQuery I program in ASP.NET/C#, XML/XSLT and I also do a lot of XHTML/CSS.

If you find a bug or want to make alterations of the code, please go to the Smooth Div Scroll page on GitHub.

Happy scrolling!

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If you like this plugin

I've put hundreds of hours of work into this project. If you found this plugin useful and it saved you a lot of time on your latest project, please consider using Flattr or PayPal to show your appreciation.

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