Bug 16497 – Overflow property set from JS can't be retrieved from JS

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: CONFIGURATION CHANGED
• Component: DOM

[Christopher Schmidt]

When the overflow property is set on an element, it's not possible to retrieve that property back from the element. Instead, the overflow is applied to overflow-x and overflow-y (which can be retrieved), and element.style.overflow will continue to return a null string.

[Christopher Schmidt]

IE6, IE7, FF2, FF3, and Opera 9.23 all return the value which is set for the overflow property ('scroll' in the case of the demo). FF2 and FF3 both report 'scroll' for the overflow-x / overflow-y value as well -- Opera does not (and I don't have IE handy to test).

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> IE6, IE7, FF2, FF3, and Opera 9.23 all return the value which is set for the
> overflow property ('scroll' in the case of the demo). FF2 and FF3 both report
> 'scroll' for the overflow-x / overflow-y value as well -- Opera does not (and I
> don't have IE handy to test).

MSIE 7 does not report values for overflow-x or overflow-y using the test case.

Confirmed bug with a local debug build of WebKit r28774 with Safari 3.0.4 on Mac OS X 10.4.11 (8S165).

[Ahmad Saleem]

I am unable to reproduce this bug in Safari 15.6 using the test case from URL field:

*** STEPS TAKEN ***

Open URL and then from Developer Tools, go to Console and type:

document.getElementById("outer").style.overflow;

and it will return "scroll" rather than 'null' string as mentioned in Comment 0.

It is same across all browsers (Chrome Canary 106 and Firefox Nightly 105).

I am going to mark this as "RESOLVED CONFIGURATION CHANGED", in case if it is incorrect and this bug is reproducible or I have tested it wrong. Please reopen it. Thanks!