How to Freeze Header of the Page

How to freeze header of the page

Try using the position: fixed; property. Here is an example fiddle:
http://jsfiddle.net/austinbv/2KTFG/

Freezing/Fixing the Top Header Row of a table

Add below to css.

table thead {
  position: fixed;
}

Try this code

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>

<style type="text/css">

/*------------------------------------------------------------------
Table Style
------------------------------------------------------------------ */
table a:link {
    color: #666;
    font-weight: bold;
    text-decoration:none;
}
table a:visited {
    color: #999999;
    font-weight:bold;
    text-decoration:none;
}
table a:active,
table a:hover {
    color: #bd5a35;
    text-decoration:underline;
}
table {
    font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    color:#666;
    font-size:12px;
    background:#eaebec;
    border:#ccc 1px solid;

    border-radius:3px;
    border-collapse:collapse; border-spacing: 0; 

    box-shadow: 0 1px 2px #d1d1d1;
}
table th {
    padding:10px 10px 10px 10px;
    border-top:0;
    border-bottom:1px solid #e0e0e0;
    border-left: 1px solid #e0e0e0;

    background: #ededed;
}
table th:first-child {
    text-align: left;
}
table tr:first-child th:first-child {
    border-top-left-radius:3px;
    border-left: 0;
}
table tr:first-child th:last-child {
    border-top-right-radius:3px;
}
table tr {
    text-align: center;
}
table td:first-child {
    text-align: left;
    border-left: 0;
}
table td {
    padding:10px;
    border-bottom:1px solid #e0e0e0;
    border-left: 1px solid #e0e0e0;
    background: #fafafa;
}
table tr:last-child td {
    border-bottom:0;
}
table tr:last-child td:first-child {
    border-bottom-left-radius:3px;
}
table tr:last-child td:last-child {
    border-bottom-right-radius:3px;
}
table tr:hover td {
    background: #f2f2f2;

}
table th, table td {
    width: 160px;

}
#wrapper {
    width: 740px;
    height: 300px;
    overflow-x: scroll;
    overflow-y: scroll;
}
table thead
{
    position:fixed;
}
</style>

</head>

<body>

<div id="wrapper">
<table>

    <!-- Table Header -->
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>Task Details</th>
            <th>Firstname</th>
            <th>Progress</th>
            <th>Vital Task</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <!-- Table Header -->

    <!-- Table Body -->
    <tbody>

        <tr>
            <td>Create pretty table design</td>
            <td> </td>
            <td>100%</td>
            <td>Yes</td>
        </tr><!-- Table Row -->

        <tr>
            <td>Take the dog for a walk</td>
            <td> </td>
            <td>100%</td>
            <td>Yes</td>
        </tr><!-- Darker Table Row -->

        <tr>
            <td>Waste half the day on Twitter</td>
            <td> </td>
            <td>20%</td>
            <td>No</td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Feel inferior after viewing Dribble</td>
            <td> </td>
            <td>80%</td>
            <td>No</td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Wince at "to do" list</td>
            <td> </td>
            <td>100%</td>
            <td>Yes</td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Vow to complete personal project</td>
            <td> </td>
            <td>23%</td>
            <td>yes</td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Procrastinate</td>
            <td> </td>
            <td>80%</td>
            <td>No</td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td><a href="#yep-iit-doesnt-exist">Hyperlink Example</a></td>
            <td> </td>
            <td>80%</td>
            <td><a href="#inexistent-id">Another</a></td>
        </tr>

    </tbody>
    <!-- Table Body -->

</table>
</div>

</body>
</html>

How to keep the header static, always on top while scrolling?

Note: This answer dates from 2010. Consider position: sticky in 2021, as mentioned in another answer.

Use position: fixed on the div that contains your header, with something like

#header {
  position: fixed;
}

#content {
  margin-top: 100px;
}

In this example, when #content starts off 100px below #header, but as the user scrolls, #header stays in place. Of course it goes without saying that you'll want to make sure #header has a background so that its content will actually be visible when the two divs overlap. Have a look at the position property here: http://reference.sitepoint.com/css/position

Freeze the top row for an html table only (Fixed Table Header Scrolling)

This is called Fixed Header Scrolling. There are a number of documented approaches:

http://www.imaputz.com/cssStuff/bigFourVersion.html

You won't effectively pull this off without JavaScript ... especially if you want cross browser support.

There are a number of gotchyas with any approach you take, especially concerning cross browser/version support.

Edit:

Even if it's not the header you want to fix, but the first row of data, the concept is still the same. I wasn't 100% which you were referring to.

Additional thought
I was tasked by my company to research a solution for this that could function in IE7+, Firefox, and Chrome.

After many moons of searching, trying, and frustration it really boiled down to a fundamental problem. For the most part, in order to gain the fixed header, you need to implement fixed height/width columns because most solutions involve using two separate tables, one for the header which will float and stay in place over the second table that contains the data.

//float this one right over second table
<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Header 1</th>
    <th>Header 2</th>
  </tr>
</table>

<table>
//Data
</table>

An alternative approach some try is utilize the tbody and thead tags but that is flawed too because IE will not allow you put a scrollbar on the tbody which means you can't limit its height (so stupid IMO).

<table>
  <thead style="do some stuff to fix its position">
  <tr>
    <th>Header 1</th>
    <th>Header 2</th>
  </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody style="No scrolling allowed here!">
     Data here
  </tbody>
</table>

This approach has many issues such as ensures EXACT pixel widths because tables are so cute in that different browsers will allocate pixels differently based on calculations and you simply CANNOT (AFAIK) guarantee that the distribution will be perfect in all cases. It becomes glaringly obvious if you have borders within your table.

I took a different approach and said screw tables since you can't make this guarantee. I used divs to mimic tables. This also has issues of positioning the rows and columns (mainly because floating has issues, using in-line block won't work for IE7, so it really left me with using absolute positioning to put them in their proper places).

There is someone out there that made the Slick Grid which has a very similar approach to mine and you can use and a good (albeit complex) example for achieving this.

https://github.com/6pac/SlickGrid/wiki

How to Freeze Header of the Page