Sticky Nav

This is the 24th project of Wes Bos's JS30 series. To see the whole 30 part series, click here Today we'll learn how to make a sticky nav in JS.

Video -

Codepen -

The <nav> element is what we'll be manipulating.

 <!-- heading before the nav -->
<header>...</header>

 <!-- the nav bar -->
<nav id="main">
  <ul>
    <li class="logo"><a href="#">LOST.</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Images</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Locations</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Maps</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

<!-- rest of the body -->
<div class="site-wrap"> ... </div>

We need to figure out the distance of the nav bar from the top of the page, then when we've scrolled to that point we need to change the CSS property of the nav to a fixed position.

const nav = document.querySelector('#main');
let topOfNav = nav.offsetTop;

function fixNav(){
}

window.addEventListener('scroll', fixNav);

elem.offsetTop gives us the distance of the element in px. We listen to the scroll event and call fixNav() to check if the nav position should change. Instead of changing the style, we can just add a class on the body element itself.

window.scrollY gives us the vertical scroll in px.

body.fixed-nav nav {
  position: fixed;
  box-shadow:0 5px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
}

function fixNav() {
  if (window.scrollY >= topOfNav) {
    document.body.style.paddingTop = nav.offsetHeight + 'px';
    document.body.classList.add('fixed-nav');
  } else {
    document.body.classList.remove('fixed-nav');
    document.body.style.paddingTop = 0;
  }
}

If the scroll us beyond the topNav position, then the fixed-nav class is added. Else it is removed. As we see from the CSS fragment above, once the body has the class of fixed-nav, the position of the nav is fixed (to the top) and there is also a box shadow.

Now when you fix the position of an element, the space it occupies goes free for other elements to reflow into. Hence along with the fixed-nav class, we add and remove the padding document.body.style.paddingTop equivalent to the height of the nav bar.

Now for a little more styling

.fixed-nav li.logo {
  max-width:500px;
}

body.fixed-nav .site-wrap {
  transform: scale(1);
}

Now along with the fixed nav bar, the logo animates into view and the text gets a little bigger.

Here is the final code -