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Should you be able to scroll a page freely and be able to view all content with the onscreen keyboard visible?

Situation

  1. You're using a touch device with a scrollable page.
  2. You initiate the onscreen keyboard (e.g. you tap into a text field)
  3. You try to scroll the page and it allows you but the bottom portion of the scroll view content is covered by the keyboard

Would a user expect to be able to see this part of the page with the keyboard open?

Mockup

A and B, show how far the user can scroll the page after the keyboard has appeared.

enter image description here

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    Doesn't it make sense to start by showing the focused input first? Afterwards, it would make sense to allow the user to scroll freely and select the next input he wants to adjust :-) As for the overlay part, I wouldn't do it, as you'd have to design your site in such a way that it covers for the keyboard space, best is to "end" the page at the top of the keyboard and scroll to show the focused input :-) Commented Sep 23, 2015 at 11:54

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The normal practice is to let the keyboard hide the bottom content. Reasons:

  1. Users are used to this convention , they are familiar with touching on the screen to hide the keyboard and touching the keyboard icon ( or any text field , if they are in the middle of some data entry ).
  2. The user is used to not seeing the bottom part and bringing it up using the same actions above.

A different case

In rare situations , if the content at the bottom of the page is directly related to the text that the user will enter in the text box , hiding the content beneath the key board is a really bad idea.

For Eg:- If the user wants to type in something by reading the content at the bottom-say type a number which is shown at the bottom - , every time user will need to toggle the keyboard which can be irritating for the user.

In such cases alone it will be a better idea to show the entire content, but my personal preference is that you keep such important information at the top of the page unless it is absolutely necessary.

So as a normal and best practice , it is ok to hide the bottom content of the page by keyboard.

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