Putting a scrollbar outside padded region

css, html

Solution

This fiddle might be, what you want: Fiddle

This example contains gradients for the top and bottom parts but can be solid colors of course, if you want that.

You can play around with the padding of the `#content` Element, but note, that you need an additional element to the right, if you want to create a passepartout-effect.

#container{
position:relative;
height:300px;
width:300px;
}
#content{
height:200px; 
width: 200px;
padding: 50px;
overflow-y: auto;
background-color: #cef;
}
.bar {
position:absolute;
width: 280px;
height: 50px;
background-color:#bcd;
}
.vbar {
position:absolute;
width: 50px;
height: 280px;
background-color:#bcd;
}
#topbar{
top:0;        
}
#bottombar{
bottom:0;
}
#leftbar{
top:0;        
}
#rightbar{
right:20px;        
top:0;
}

<div id="container">
    <div id="topbar" class="bar"> </div>
    <div id="content" class="pad">
        1<br> 2<br> 3<br> 4<br> 5<br> 6<br> 7<br> 8<br> 9<br> 10<br> 11<br> 12<br> 13<br> 14<br> 15<br> 16<br> 17<br> 18<br> 19<br> 20<br> 21<br> 22<br> 23<br> 24<br> 25<br> 26<br> 27<br> 28<br> 29<br> 30<br> 31<br> 32<br> 33<br> 34<br> 35<br> 36<br> 37<br> 38<br> 39<br> 40<br> 41<br> 42<br>
    </div>
    <div id="bottombar" class="bar"></div>
</div>

edit: changed the fiddle link, the old link with the gradients is the following: Fiddle

Problem

Original source