Is it possible to force jQuery.jScrollPane to always show a vertical scroll-bar?
e.g. hidden setting, API function?
Preferably without touching the content pane, its height etc.
Unfortunately this isn't currently possible with jScrollPane. There is an open feature request for it though:
https://github.com/vitch/jScrollPane/issues#issue/8
As a workaround for now you could place an element with a min-height directly inside your scrollpane to force the scrollbar like in this example:
http://www.jsfiddle.net/vitch/5D8sR/
Hope it helps!