CSS Position: Sticky and Overflow

CSS position: sticky and overflow

It's important to understand that sticky elements are first treated like a relative element and then a fixed element (see MDN). Therefore, you must first look at it like a relative element. If you give a height of 100% to a relative element, then nothing really happens unless its parent element has a defined height.

If you want your sticky element to have a scrollbar too, you must give it a meaningful height. I suggest using viewport height:

.child {
  position: sticky;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  height: 50vh;
  overflow-y: auto;
}

For the record - the "stickiness" doesn't appear to be working as expected in either FF or Safari in terms of the element becoming fixed during scrolling. I'm not concerning myself with that - just focusing on the overflow issue.

How does the position: sticky; property work?

Sticky positioning is a hybrid of relative and fixed positioning. The element is treated as relative positioned until it crosses a specified threshold, at which point it is treated as fixed positioned.

...

You must specify a threshold with at least one of top, right, bottom, or left for sticky positioning to behave as expected. Otherwise, it will be indistinguishable from relative positioning.
[source: MDN]

So in your example, you have to define the position where it should stick in the end by using the top property.

html, body {
  height: 200%;
}

nav {
  position: sticky;
  position: -webkit-sticky;
  top: 0; /* required */
}

.nav-selections {
  text-transform: uppercase;
  letter-spacing: 5px;
  font: 18px "lato", sans-serif;
  display: inline-block;
  text-decoration: none;
  color: white;
  padding: 18px;
  float: right;
  margin-left: 50px;
  transition: 1.5s;
}

.nav-selections:hover {
  transition: 1.5s;
  color: black;
}

ul {
  background-color: #B79b58;
  overflow: auto;
}

li {
  list-style-type: none;
}

<nav>
  <ul align="left">
    <li><a href="#/contact" class="nav-selections" style="margin-right:35px;">Contact</a></li>
    <li><a href="#/about" class="nav-selections">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="#/products" class="nav-selections">Products</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" class="nav-selections">Home</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

CSS position: sticky on horizontal scroll

Parent (.scroll) has to be position: relative at first as you can check below but I would consider different structure (all contents with same title could be in same div) to stick it over multiple items.

* {
  box-sizing: border-box;
}

body {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

.scroll {
  position: relative;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: row;
  width: 100vw;
  height: 100px;
  background: yellow;
  overflow: scroll;
}

.item {
  flex-flow: column;
  flex-shrink: 0;
  width: 200px;
  height: 100%;
  margin-right: 20px;
}

.scroll .item .title {
  position: sticky;
  display: inline;
  left: 0;
  top: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 40px;
}

.item .content {
  width: 100%;
  height: 60px;
  border: 3px solid green;
}

.item .content:first-child {
  margin-top: 1rem;
}

<div class="scroll">
  
  <div class="item">
    <div class="title">
      Title 1
    </div>
    <div class="content">
      Content
    </div>
  </div>
  
  <div class="item">
    <div class="content">
      Content
    </div>
  </div>
  
  <div class="item">
    <div class="title">
      Title 2
    </div>
    <div class="content">
      Content
    </div>
  </div>
  
  <div class="item">
    <div class="content">
      Content
    </div>
  </div>
  
  <div class="item">
    <div class="content">
      Content
    </div>
  </div>

</div>

position: sticky not working after some amount of scroll

One way to solve this:

.slider {
  overflow: auto;
  display: grid; /* main element as grid */
  grid-auto-columns: 20%;  /* width of the items */
}
.header,
.body {
   display: contents; /* remove the parent boundary to make sticky works */
}
.header > * {
  grid-row: 1; /* all header elements in first row */
}
.body > * {
  grid-row: 2; /* all body elements in second row */
}
.item {
  height: 100px;
  background: yellow;
  border: 1px solid black;
}

.sticky-item-left {
  position: sticky;
  left: 0;  
  background: red;
}

.sticky-item-right {
  position: sticky;
  right: 0;
  background: green;
}

<div class="slider">
  <div class="header">
    <div class="item sticky-item-left"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item sticky-item-right"></div>
  </div>
  <div class="body">
    <div class="item sticky-item-left"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item"></div>
    <div class="item sticky-item-right"></div>
  </div>
</div>

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