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Viewport concepts

This article explains the concept of the viewport — what it is, its impact in terms of CSS, SVG, and mobile devices — and differentiates between the visual viewport and the layout viewport.

What is a viewport?​

A viewport represents the area in computer graphics being currently viewed. In web browser terms, it is generally the same as the browser window, excluding the UI, menu bar, etc. That is the part of the document you are viewing.

Documents like this article may be very long. Your viewport is everything that is currently visible, notably, the "what is a viewport" section, and perhaps some of the navigation menu. The size of the viewport depends on the size of the screen, whether the browser is in fullscreen mode or not, and whether or not the user zoomed in. Content outside the viewport, such as the See Also section in this document, is likely to not be visible onscreen until scrolled into view.

  • On larger monitors where applications aren't necessarily full screen, the viewport is the size of the browser window.
  • On most mobile devices and when the browser is in fullscreen mode, the viewport is the entire screen.
  • In fullscreen mode, the viewport is the device screen, the window is the browser window, which can be as big as the viewport or smaller, and the document is the website, which can be much taller or wider than the viewport.

To recap, the viewport is basically the part of the document that is currently visible.

Viewport sizes are mutable​

The width of the viewport is not always the width of the window. If you query the width or height of the window and document in Chrome or Firefox, you may get:

document.documentElement.clientWidth; /* 1200 */
window.innerWidth; /* 1200 */
window.outerWidth; /* 1200 */
document.documentElement.clientHeight; /* 800 */
window.innerHeight; /* 800 */
window.outerHeight; /* 900 */

There are several DOM properties that can help you query viewport size, and other similar lengths:

  • The document element's {{DOMxRef("Element.clientWidth")}} is the inner width of a document in CSS pixels, including padding (but not borders, margins, or vertical scrollbars, if present). This is the viewport width.
  • The {{DOMxRef("Window.innerWidth")}} is the width, in CSS pixels, of the browser window viewport including, if rendered, the vertical scrollbar.
  • The {{DOMxRef("Window.outerWidth")}} is the width of the outside of the browser window including all the window {{glossary("chrome")}}.

In an experiment with these, the innerWidth and outerWidth was seen to be the same, but the outerHeight was 100px taller than the innerHeight. This is because the outerHeight includes the browser chrome: measurements were taken on a browser with an address bar and bookmarks bar totalling 100px in height, but no chrome on the left or right of the window.

The area within the innerHeight and innerWidth is generally considered the layout viewport. The browser chrome is not considered part of the viewport.

When zoomed in, both Firefox and Chrome report the new CSS pixel size for innerWidth and clientWidth. The values returned for the outerWidth and outerHeight depend on the browser: Firefox reports the new value in CSS pixels, but Chrome returns the length in the default pixel size. When zoomed in you may get:

document.documentElement.clientWidth; /* 800 */
window.innerWidth; /* 800 */
window.outerWidth; /* 800 in Firefox, 1200 in chrome */
document.documentElement.clientHeight; /* 533 */
window.innerHeight; /* 533 */
window.outerHeight; /* 596 in Firefox, 900 in chrome */

The viewport was originally 1200 x 800 pixels. Upon zooming in, the viewport became 800 x 533 pixels. This is the layout viewport. Sticky headers or footers, with the following styles, will stick to the top and bottom of the layout viewport respectively.

body > header {
  position: fixed;
  top: 0;
}
body > footer {
  position: fixed;
  bottom: 0;
}

We got the 800 x 533 measurement when we zoomed in using the keyboard. The header and footer stayed flush against the top and bottom of the window. But what if we had pinched-zoomed on a tablet? What if a dynamic keyboard pops open on a phone?

The web contains two viewports, the layout viewport and the visual viewport. The visual viewport is the part of the web page that is currently visible in the browser and can change. When the user pinch-zooms the page, pops open a dynamic keyboard, or when a previously hidden address bar becomes visible, the visual viewport shrinks but the layout viewport is unchanged.

Sticky headers or footers, as discussed above, stick to the top and bottom of the layout viewport, and therefore remain in view when we zoom in with the keyboard. If you pinch-zoom, the layout viewport may not be fully visible. If you magnify from the middle of the layout viewport, the content will expand in all four directions. If you have a sticky header or footer, they will still be stuck to the top or bottom of the layout viewport, but they may not be visible at the top and bottom of the device's screen — which is the visual viewport. The visual viewport is the currently visible portion of the layout viewport. If you scroll down, you are changing the contents of the visual viewport and bringing the bottom of the layout viewport into view, displaying the sticky footer, which will then stay stuck at the bottom.

The visual viewport is the visual portion of a screen not including on-screen keyboards, areas outside of a pinch-zoom area, or other feature that doesn't scale with the dimensions of a page. The visual viewport is the same size as the layout viewport or smaller.

For a page containing iframes, objects, or external SVG, both the containing pages and each included file has their own unique window object. Only the top-level window has a visual viewport that may be distinct from the layout viewport. For included documents, the visual viewport and layout viewport are the same.

CSS​

The layout viewport and visual viewport described above are not the only viewports you will encounter. Any sub-viewport that is fully or partially displayed within the layout viewport is considered a visual viewport.

We generally think of width and height media queries as being relative to the width and height of the browser window. They are actually relative to the viewport, which is the window in the main document but is the intrinsic size of the element's parent in a nested browsing context like objects, iframes and SVG. In CSS, we also have length units based on the viewport size. A vh unit is 1% of the layout viewport's height. Similarly, the vw unit is 1% of the layout viewport's width.

<iframe>​

Inside an iframe, the visual viewport is the size of the inner width and height of the iframe, rather than the parent document. You can set any height and width on an iframe, but the whole document may not be visible.

If you use viewport length units in your CSS within the iframe document, 1vh will be 1% of the height of the iframe, and 1vw will be 1% of the width of the document.

iframe {
  width: 50vw;
}

If the iframe is set to 50vw, it will be 50% of the width of the 1200px parent document in our example above, or 600px, with 1vw being 6px. When zoomed in, the iframe shrinks to 400px and 1vw becomes 4px.

A width-based media query within the iframe document is relative to the iframe's viewport.

@media screen and (min-width: 500px) {
  p {
    color: red;
  }
}

If the above CSS is included in the iframe, the paragraphs will become red when the user has zoomed in, but this style does not apply in the non-zoomed-in state.

SVG​

In an SVG document, the viewport is the visible area of the SVG image. You can set any height and width on an SVG, but the whole image might not be visible. The area that is visible is called the viewport. The size of the viewport can be defined using the width and height attributes of the {{SVGElement("svg")}} element.

<svg height="300" width="400"></svg>

In this example, the viewport has an {{glossary("aspect ratio")}} of 3:4 and is, by default, 400 by 300 units, with a unit generally being a CSS pixel.

SVG also has an internal coordinate system defined via the viewBox attribute, which is not related to this viewport discussion.

If you include an SVG file in your HTML, the viewport of the SVG is the initial containing block, or the width and height of the SVG container. Using the {{CSSxRef("@media")}} query in your SVG's CSS is relative to that container, not the browser.

@media screen and (min-width: 400px) and (max-width: 500px) {
  /* CSS goes here */
}

Generally, when you write the above media query, the styles are applied if the viewport, generally the browser window, is between 400px and 500px, inclusive. The width media query in the SVG is based on the element in which the SVG is contained — the {{htmlelement("img")}} if the source is an SVG file, the SVG itself if the SVG is included directly into the HTML, or the parent if the parent element has a width assigned and — not the viewport's width. With the above media query being in our SVG file, the CSS is applied if the SVG container is between 400 and 500px.

JavaScript​

The Visual Viewport API provides a mechanism for querying and modifying the properties of the visual viewport.

Mobile Viewports​

Mobile devices come in all shapes and sizes, with screens of differing device pixel ratios. The mobile browser's viewport is the area of the window in which web content can be seen, which is not necessarily the same size as the rendered page. Mobile browsers render pages in a virtual window or viewport, generally at 980px, which is usually wider than the screen, and then shrink the rendered result down so it can all be seen at once. Users can then pan and zoom to see different areas of the page. For example, if a mobile screen has a width of 320px, a website might be rendered with a virtual viewport of 980px, and then it will be shrunk down to fit into the 320px space, which, depending on the design, is illegible for many if not everyone. To tell a mobile browser to use the viewport width instead of the default 980px as the width of the screen, developers can include a viewport meta tag, like the following:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />

The width property controls the size of the viewport. It should preferably be set to device-width, which is the width of the screen in CSS pixels at a scale of 100%. There are other properties, including maximum-scale, minimum-scale, and user-scalable, which control whether users can zoom the page in or out, but the default values are the best for accessibility and user experience, so these can be omitted.

See also​