I use an extension called "Bar Breaker" that hides these when you scroll away from the top/bottom of the page.[0] More people should know about it.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bar-breaker/
that when reading on my laptop screen, it takes up valuable vertical space on a small display that is in landscape mode. I want to use my screen's real estate to read the freaking content, not look at your stupid branding bar.
And I don't need any on-page assistance to jump back to the top of the page and/or find the navigation. I have a "Home" key on my keyboard and use it frequently.
It would be better to have a single extension like uBlock origin to handle the browser compatibility, and then release the countermeasures through that. In fact, ublock already has "Annoyances" lists for things like cookie banners, but I don't think it includes the dick bar unfortunately.
Incidentally, these bars are always on sites where the navbar takes 10% vertical space, cookie banner (full width of course) takes another 30% at the bottom, their text is overspaced and oversized, the left/right margins are huge so the text is like 50% of the width... Don't these people ever look at their own site? With many of these, I'm so confused how anyone could look at it and say it's good to go.
I'm happy to learn something new about other people's preferences, though. If people prefer scrolling to the top, so be it!
EDIT: It occurs to me that this could be a preference setting. A few of the websites that have let me have my way, I've started generating CSS from a Django template and adding configuration options to let users set variables like colors--with really positive feedback from disabled users. At a fundamental level, I think the solution to accessibility is often configurability, because people with different disabilities often need different, mutually incompatible accommodations.
1. JS disabled by default, only enabled on sites I choose
2. Filter to fix sites that mess with scrolling:
##html:style(scroll-behavior: auto !important;)
##*:matches-css(position:fixed)
##*:matches-css(position:sticky)— Joel Spolsky, What is the Work of Dogs in this Country? (2001): <https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/05/05/what-is-the-work-o...>
There can be a logic to keeping the header at the top like a menu bar, and I applaud you if you take an approach that focuses on value to the user. Though I'd still say most sites that use this approach, don't have a strong need for it, nor do they consider smaller viewports except for portrait mobile.
Configuration is great, though it quickly runs into discoverability issues. However it is the only way to solve some things - like you pointed out with colors. I know people who rely on high contrast colors and others that reduce contrast as much as they effectively can.
Just kill the fucking dickbar.
Unfortunately, the web today has strayed far from its original vision. Yet, we continue to rely on the foundational technologies that were created for that very vision.
If browsers catered to their user's desires more than they cater to developers, the web wouldn't be so shitty.
The primary benefit of web applications is they don't lose your data. Not a single web application UI that exists provides as good a user experience as the native desktop applications that came before. A web where browsers provided their own UIs for various document types, and those document types could not modify their UIs in any way, period, would be a better web. You serve up the document, I get to control how it looks and behaves.
The biggest problem for me is the randomness between different sites. It's not a problem for Firefox to display a header when I scroll up, since I can predict its behaviour. My muscle memory adapts by scrolling up and then down again without conscious thought. It's a much bigger problem if every site shows its header slightly differently.
I think the key thing is that when I scroll up, 95% of the time I want to see the text up the page, and at most maaaaaaaybe 5% of the time I want to open the menu. This is especially true if I got to your website via a search engine. I don't give a damn what's hidden in your menu bar unless it's the checkout button for my shopping cart, and even then I'd prefer you use a footer for that.
But for UX: (1) Keep it small and simple! It shouldn't be more than ~2 lines of text. (2) Make it CSS-only; if you have to use custom JS to achieve a certain effect, be ready to spend a LOT of time to get the details right, or it'll feel janky. (3) Use `scroll-padding` in the CSS to make sure links to sections/etc work correctly.
Like the User-Scripts of Greasemonkey?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
On MacOS: Click the top part of the scroll bar
Browsing without reader view enabled by default is like driving your car around with the hand brake engaged.
In my practice, I'll try a Jedi mind trick, e.g. "Trying to [state larger goal] makes a lot of sense. An even more effective way to do that is to [state alternate, non-toxic technique]."
##[class*="part of the name of the annoying class, generally sticky something"]
this rule is amazing to deal with those randomly generated class names
I have built a handful of personal sites at this point with no JS, and it's really amazing what modern CSS can do. My favorite trick is using tabindex=0 and :focus-within to make dropdowns (using :focus doesn't handle submenus).