CSS div element - how to show horizontal scroll bars only?

I have a div container and have defined its style as follows:

div#tbl-container 
{
    width: 600px;   
    overflow: auto;    
    scrollbar-base-color:#ffeaff
}

This gives me both horizontal and vertical scroll bars automatically once I populate my table which is contained by this div. I just want only horizontal scroll bars to appear automatically. I will modify the height of the table programmatically.

How do I do this?

You shouldn't get both horizontal and vertical scrollbars unless you make the content large enough to require them.

However you typically do in IE due to a bug. Check in other browsers (Firefox etc.) to find out whether it is in fact only IE that is doing it.

IE6-7 (amongst other browsers) supports the proposed CSS3 extension to set scrollbars independently, which you could use to suppress the vertical scrollbar:

overflow: auto;
overflow-y: hidden;

You may also need to add for IE8:

-ms-overflow-y: hidden;

as Microsoft are threatening to move all pre-CR-standard properties into their own ‘-ms’ box in IE8 Standards Mode. (This would have made sense if they'd always done it that way, but is rather an inconvenience for everyone now.)

On the other hand it's entirely possible IE8 will have fixed the bug anyway.

I also had to add white-space: nowrap; to the style, otherwise elements would wrap down into the area that we're removing the ability to scroll to.

This solution is without height/width specification for the father div so it will be responsive to window resizing and most useful cause horizontal scrollbars appears just if needed.

.container{
    padding:20px;
    border:dotted 1px;
    white-space:nowrap;
    overflow-x:auto;
}

.box{
    width:100px;
    height:180px;
    background-color: red;
    margin:10px;
    display:inline-block
}

Take a look at DEMO

To show both:

<div style="height:250px; width:550px; overflow-x:scroll ; overflow-y: scroll; padding-bottom:10px;">      </div>

Hide X Axis:

<div style="height:250px; width:550px; overflow-x:hidden; overflow-y: scroll; padding-bottom:10px;">      </div>

Hide Y Axis:

<div style="height:250px; width:550px; overflow-x:scroll ; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom:10px;">      </div>

you can also make it overflow: auto and give a maximum fixed height and width that way, when the text or whatever is in there, overflows it'll show only the required scrollbar

I use the CSS properties :

1. "overflow-x: auto";
2. "overflow-y: hidden";
3. "white-space: nowrap";

Don't forget to set a Width, both for the container and inner DIVS components. The property "white-space : nowrap" allows the inner DIVS not to drop on a different line.

Considering the following HTML:

<div class="container"> 
  <div class="inner-1"></div>
  <div class="inner-2"></div>
  <div class="inner-3"></div>
</div>

I use the following CSS to have an horizontal scroll only:

.container {
  height: 80px;
  width: 600px;
  overflow-x: auto;
  overflow-y: hidden; 
  white-space: nowrap;
}
.inner-1,.inner-2,.inner-3 {
  height: 60px;
  max-width: 250px;
 display: inline-block; /* this should fix it */
}

Fiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/qrjh93x8/ (not working with the above code)

Use the following

<div style="max-width:980px; overflow-x: scroll; white-space: nowrap;">
<table border="1" style="cellpadding:0; cellspacing:0; border:0; width=:100%;" >

CSS3 has the overflow-x property, but I wouldn't expect great support for that. In CSS2 all you can do is set a general scroll policy and work your widths and heights not to mess them up.

.box-author-txt {width:596px; float:left; padding:5px 0px 10px 10px;  border:1px #dddddd solid; -moz-border-radius: 0 0 5px 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 0 0 5px 5px; -o-border-radius: 0 0 5px 5px; border-radius: 0 0 5px 5px; overflow-x: scroll; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: hidden;}


.box-author-txt ul{ vertical-align:top; height:auto; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; margin:0 9px 0 0; padding:0px;}
.box-author-txt ul li{ list-style-type:none;  width:140px; }

We should set to overflow: auto and hide a scrollbar which we don't use for working on unsupporting CSS3 browser. Look at this CSS Overflow; XME.im