How can I make the contents of a fixed element scrollable only when it exceeds the height of the viewport?

I have a div positioned fixed on the left side of a web page, containing menu and navigation links. It has no height set from css, the content determines the height, the width is fixed. The problem is that if the content is too much, the div will be larger than the window's height, and part of the content will not be visible. (Scrolling the window doesn't help, since the position is fixed and the div won't scroll.)

I tried to set overflow-y:auto; but that doesn't help either, the div doesn't seem to notice that part of it is outside of the window.

How can I make it's contents scrollable only, if needed, if the div hangs out of the window?

Solution 1:

You probably can't. Here's something that comes close. You won't get content to flow around it if there's space below.

http://jsfiddle.net/ThnLk/1289

.stuck {
    position: fixed;
    top: 10px;
    left: 10px;
    bottom: 10px;
    width: 180px;
    overflow-y: scroll;
}

You can do a percentage height as well:

http://jsfiddle.net/ThnLk/1287/

.stuck {
    max-height: 100%;
}

Solution 2:

The link below will demonstrate how I accomplished this. Not very hard - just have to use some clever front-end dev!!

<div style="position: fixed; bottom: 0%; top: 0%;">

    <div style="overflow-y: scroll; height: 100%;">

       Menu HTML goes in here

    </div>

</div>

http://jsfiddle.net/RyanBrackett/b44Zn/