This is a jQuery plugin which allows us to quickly check if an element is within the browsers visual viewport, regardless of the scroll position. If a user can see this element, the function will return true.

This basic check will return true if the entire element is visible to the user (within the visual viewport).

$('#element').visible();

If you'd like to check for ANY PART of the element, you can use the following:

$('#element').visible( true );

The plugin ignores the elements visibility by default. E.g., display:none, visibility: hidden, offsetWidth or offsetHeight is 0). To filter on css visibility, you can use the jQuery :visible selector:

$('#element:visible').visible();

Optionally, you can specify a second parameter to the .visible plugin, which will check whether the element is visible, as well as whether it's within the viewport too.

$('#element:visible').visible( false, true );

Optionally, you can add a third parameter to specify the direction to check for visibility. This can either be 'horizontal', 'vertical' or 'both'. Default is to 'both'.

$('#element').visible( false, false, 'horizontal' );

The Demos for this plugin live under the examples/ directory. Open them directly in your web browser, or view the following online examples:

• Basic Demo

See the blog article:

• Checking if an element is visible on-screen using jQuery

Currently, this plugin will not check for visibility in nested scrollable areas, only on the main viewport (window object).