fixed position div freezes on page (iPad) - ipad

Question

I have an asp.net web site I am building to be supported on ipad. When I focus on an input element and the keyboard pops up, the position fixed header div(which normally scrolls along with the page) will pop up the page a distance equivalent to the amount the keyboard takes up and freeze there for the duration of the input process. Once the keyboard is dropped back down, the div snaps back into place and behaves normally again. I am testing on iOS5 so position: fixed should be supported.
Is this a known issue? Has someone come across this and dealt with it before? I can't seem to find anything on this.

Answer 1

Fixed positioning is broken on iOS5/iOS6/iOS7.
Edit 3: See link to a working fix near end of this answer for iOS8.
Position:fixed is broken when either:
a) the page is zoomed
or
b) the keyboard shows on the iPad/iPhone (due to an input getting focus).
You can view the bugs yourself in jsbin.com/icibaz/3 by opening the link and zooming, or giving the input focus. You can edit the edit the html yourself.
Notes about bugs (a) and (b):
A fixed div with top: 0px; left: 0px; will show in the wrong position (above or below the top of the screen) when an input gets focus and the keyboard shows.
The problem seems to have something to do with the auto-centering of the input on the screen (changing window.pageYOffset).
It appears to be a calculation fault, and not a redraw fault: if you force the top: to change (e.g. switching between 0px and 1px) on the onScroll event, you can see the fixed div move by a pixel, but it remains in the wrong place.
One solution I used previously is to hide the fixed div when an input gets focus - see the other Answer I wrote.
The fixed div seems to becomes stuck at the same absolute position on the page it was at at the time when the keyboard opened.
So perhaps change the div to absolute positioning when an input has focus? Edit 3: see comment at bottom using this solution. Or perhaps save the pageXOffset/pageYOffset values before the keyboard is opened, and in an onScroll event calculate the difference between those values and the current pageXOffset/pageYOffset values (current once the keyboard is opened), and offset the fixed div by that difference.
There appears to be a different problem with fixed positioning if the page is zoomed - try it here (Also good information here about Android support for fixed in comments).
Edit 1: To reproduce use jsbin (not jsfiddle) and use the fullscreen view of jsbin (not the edit page). Avoid jsfiddle (and edit view of jsbin) because they put the code inside an iframe which causes interference with fixed positioning and pageYOffset.
Edit 2: iOS 6 and iOS 7 Mobile Safari position:fixed; still has the same issues - presumably they are by design!.
Edit 3: A working solution for (b) is when the input get focus, change the header to absolute positioning and then set the header top on the page scroll event for example. This solution:
Uses fixed positioning when input not focused (using window.onscroll has terrible jitter).
Don't allow pinch-zoom (avoid bug (a) above).
Uses absolute positioning and window.pageYOffset once an input gets focus (so header is correctly positioned).
If scrolled while input has focus, set style.top to equal pageYOffset (header will jitter somewhat due to onscroll event delay even on iOS8).
If using UIWebView within an App on iOS8, or using <=iOS7, if scrolling when input has focus, header will be super jittery because onscroll is not fired till scroll finishes.
Go back to fixed position header once input loses focus (Example uses input.onblur, but probably tider to use
document.body.onfocus).
Beware usability fail that if header too large, the input can be occluded/covered.
I couldn't get to work for a footer due to bugs in iOS page/viewport height when the keyboard is showing.
Edit example using http://jsbin.com/xujofoze/4/edit and view using http://output.jsbin.com/xujofoze/4/quiet

Answer 2

For my needs, I found it easier to use an absolute positioned header, hide it before scroll and show it when finish scroll (I need the same code to support iOS4 and Android).
For my purposes, I hide the header on a touchstart event, and show it again on touchend or scroll event (plus some timers to improve responsiveness/reduce flickering). It flashes, but is the best compromise I could find. One can detect the start of scrolling using the touchmove event (jQuery does this), but I found touchmove didn't work as well for me because:
regularly the iPad fails to do a repaint before scrolling (i.e. the absolute header remains stuck - even though the top was changed before scrolling started).
when an input element gets focus, the iPad auto-centres the element, but the scrollstart event doesn't get fired (because no touchmove if just clicking an input).
Implementing a fixed header on iOS5 could be improved by using a hybrid approach of fixed and absolute positioning:
used fixed positioning for iOS5 until an input gets focus.
when an input gets focus (keyboard showing), change to the iOS4 absolute positioning code.
when the keyboard is closed, change back to fixed positioning.
Code to detect when keyboard is closed (e.g. using keyboard hide key) is to register the DOMFocusOut event on the document element and do something like the following code. The timeout is needed because the DOMFocusOut event can fire between when one element gets the focus and another loses it.
function document_DOMFocusOut() {
clearTimeout(touchBlurTimer);
touchBlurTimer = setTimeout(function() {
if (document.activeElement == document.body) {
handleKeyboardHide();
}
}.bind(this), 400);
}
My fixed header code is something like:
{
setup: function() {
observe(window, 'scroll', this, 'onWinScroll');
observe(document, 'touchstart', this, 'onTouchStart');
observe(document, 'touchend', this, 'onTouchEnd');
if (isMobile) {
observe(document, 'DOMFocusOut', this, 'docBlurTouch');
} else if (isIE) {
// see http://ajaxian.com/archives/fixing-loss-of-focus-on-ie for code to go into this.docBlurIe()
observe(document, 'focusout', this, 'docBlurIe');
} else {
observe(isFirefox ? document : window, 'blur', this, 'docBlur');
}
},
onWinScroll: function() {
clearTimeout(this.scrollTimer);
this.scrolling = false;
this.rehomeAll();
},
rehomeAll: function() {
if ((isIOS5 && this.scrolling) || isIOS4 || isAndroid) {
this.useAbsolutePositioning();
} else {
this.useFixedPositioning();
}
},
// Important side effect that this event registered on document on iOs. Without it event.touches.length is incorrect for any elements in the document using the touchstart event!!!
onTouchStart: function(event) {
clearTimeout(this.scrollTimer);
if (!this.scrolling && event.touches.length == 1) {
this.scrolling = true;
this.touchStartTime = inputOrOtherKeyboardShowingElement(event.target) ? 0 : (new Date).getTime();
// Needs to be in touchStart so happens before iPad automatic scrolling to input, also not reliable using touchMove (although jQuery touch uses touchMove to unreliably detect scrolling).
this.rehomeAll();
}
},
onTouchEnd: function(event) {
clearTimeout(this.scrollTimer);
if (this.scrolling && !event.touches.length) {
var touchedDuration = (new Date).getTime() - this.touchStartTime;
// Need delay so iPad can scroll to the input before we reshow the header.
var showQuick = this.touchStartTime && touchedDuration < 400;
this.scrollTimer = setTimeout(function() {
if (this.scrolling) {
this.scrolling = false;
this.rehomeAll();
}
}.bind(this), showQuick ? 0 : 400);
}
},
// ... more code
}
jQuery mobile supports scrollstart and scrollstop events:
var supportTouch = $.support.touch,
scrollEvent = "touchmove scroll",
touchStartEvent = supportTouch ? "touchstart" : "mousedown",
touchStopEvent = supportTouch ? "touchend" : "mouseup",
touchMoveEvent = supportTouch ? "touchmove" : "mousemove";
function triggerCustomEvent( obj, eventType, event ) {
var originalType = event.type;
event.type = eventType;
$.event.handle.call( obj, event );
event.type = originalType;
}
// also handles scrollstop
$.event.special.scrollstart = {
enabled: true,
setup: function() {
var thisObject = this,
$this = $( thisObject ),
scrolling,
timer;
function trigger( event, state ) {
scrolling = state;
triggerCustomEvent( thisObject, scrolling ? "scrollstart" : "scrollstop", event );
}
// iPhone triggers scroll after a small delay; use touchmove instead
$this.bind( scrollEvent, function( event ) {
if ( !$.event.special.scrollstart.enabled ) {
return;
}
if ( !scrolling ) {
trigger( event, true );
}
clearTimeout( timer );
timer = setTimeout(function() {
trigger( event, false );
}, 50 );
});
}
};

Answer 3

This is somewhat still a problem in iOS13 (when a long text gets deleted in the 'textarea' field, fixed header jumps to the start of that 'textarea' field, obstructing the view), therefore, I thought I share my quick fix:
Since my footer is rather large, I went about without any JS and just adding a greater z-index to the footer than what the fixed header has. Out of sight, out of mind.