carouscroll

A web component to add next/previous buttons to a horizontal scrollable container.

• Demos

Features

• Interaction compatible with scroll or touch.
• No layout shift. Make sure you include the CSS snippet!
• (Optional) Smooth scrolling with scroll-behavior: smooth.
• (Optional) loop attribute to enable looping around from start/end.
• (Optional) Next/Previous buttons can be placed anywhere in the document.
• (Optional) <output> element can accessibly announce the current slide number (out of total number of slides).

Installation

You can install via npm or download the carouscroll.js JavaScript file manually.

npm install @zachleat/carouscroll --save

Add carouscroll.js to your site’s JavaScript assets.

Usage

First you need to add some critical CSS to your page. These styles are crucial to reduce Layout Shift (CLS), set the aspect ratio of the slides, and to avoid loading loading="lazy" images on off-screen slides.

carou-scroll {
	display: flex;
	overflow-x: scroll;
	overflow-y: hidden;
}
carou-scroll > * {
	min-width: 100%;
	aspect-ratio: 16/9;
}

Next, add the HTML:

<carou-scroll id="my-scroller">
	<div class="demo-slide">1</div>
	<div class="demo-slide">2</div>
	<!-- … -->
</carou-scroll>

That’s it!

Add buttons (optional)

For maximum flexibility, these buttons can be placed anywhere in the document and are tied by an id back to the parent scroller.

Make sure you think about the before/after JavaScript experience here. This component will remove disabled for you but you can add additional styling via your own CSS: carou-scroll:defined {}.

<button type="button" disabled data-carousel-previous="my-scroller">Previous</button>
<button type="button" disabled data-carousel-next="my-scroller">Next</button>

Add output (optional)

This will update (and accessibly announce) a current status element with e.g. Slide 1 of 10 text.

For maximum flexibility, this element can be placed anywhere in the document and is tied by an id back to the parent scroller.

<output data-carousel-output="my-scroller"></output>

Make it loop around (optional)

Add the loop attribute.

<carou-scroll id="my-scroller" loop>

Smooth scrolling CSS (optional)

carou-scroll {
	scroll-behavior: smooth;
}

Add your own scroll snap CSS (optional)

carou-scroll {
	scroll-snap-type: x mandatory;
}
carou-scroll > * {
	scroll-snap-align: center;
}