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Web page annoyances that I don't inflict on you

(rachelbythebay.com)
569 points todsacerdoti | 2 comments | 05 Jan 25 01:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source
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hackingonempty ◴[05 Jan 25 02:51 UTC] No.42599363[source]▶
> I don't keep a "dick bar" that sticks to the top of the page to remind you which site you're on.

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/

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kerkeslager ◴[05 Jan 25 04:49 UTC] No.42599856[source]▶
I am usually the first old man to yell at any cloud, and I was overjoyed when someone invented the word "enshittening" for me to describe how the internet has gotten, but it surprised me a bit that people found that one annoying. I can see the problem of it sticking the top of the page with a logo (which is basically an ad and I hate those), but they usually have a menu there, so I always thought of them a bit like the toolbar at the top of an application window in a native desktop application. FWIW when I've built those, I've always de-emphasized the branding and focused on making the menus obvious and accessible.

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.

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1. cdrini ◴[06 Jan 25 06:07 UTC] No.42608132[source]▶
I agree with a lot of the complaints on this article except I think like two, and this is one of them. I think a sticky header is incredibly useful, and they're not something new. Books have sticky headers! Every page of a book will generally list the title and author on the top of each page. I find it just a useful way to provide context and to help me remember who/what I'm reading. The colours/branding of the sticky header communicate that much better to me than the tiny text-only title/url of my browser. And the favicon like-wise doesn't contain enough details for me to latch onto it.

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.

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2. kerkeslager ◴[07 Jan 25 14:26 UTC] No.42622628[source]▶
> (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.

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).