I see no problems at all with fixed top bars. They take what? 20pixels? 50 pixels at most. It's really not a huge loss. I'm more annoyed by lateral bars since I already use the horizontal space with tree style tab.
The Scroll Up Bar
51–60 of 118 posts
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#52I see no problems at all with fixed top bars. They take what? 20pixels? 50 pixels at most. It's really not a huge loss. I'm more annoyed by lateral bars since I already use the horizontal space with tree style tab.
40-50 pixels is generally what you want (for decently sized touch targets)
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#53I don't get why these bars are being used everywhere, personally I find them annoying. Scrolling up takes like half a second...
The sole reason is branding. Websites don't want you just reading content; they want you reading content on their site . The most obvious way to remind you that you're reading it on their site, and thus convince you to come back, is a fixed header bar.
I suppose part of what lead to this was browser vendors pretty much eliminating the traditional title bar (by the time you have a dozen tabs open there's room for maybe 7 letters and a 16x16 icon per tab), so websites have had to start supplementing with their own title bars to help users figure out what site they're on.
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#54 An interesting way to solve the issue is to hide the bar when scrolling down, and show it when scrolling up.
I typically stick to reading around the top of my device, and occasionally I want to re-read something I just read. Instead of just getting to re-read the hidden lines, I have to continue scrolling while stupid chrome or a fixed bar appears, and then finally lets me scroll the content.
It's probably the case that a lot of people love this, but I hate it. If I want to see the browser chrome or navigational elements, I'm happy to tap the top of the window to scroll me there. I don't want the browser trying to figure out what I want to do based purely on scrolling.
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#55Fixed bars are annoying and should rarely be used. But what's even worse is when the mobile version helpfully removes the content or feature that you'd like to see. Please just have one site, make it efficient, and be done with it.
It's so much easier to fuck up mobile than it is to do it right. And if you're not doing it exactly right, don't do it at all.
Here's what the EC2 console looks like on mobile:
http://i.imgur.com/MfbCdhU.png
It appears that Amazon is doing this on purpose...
Yes... user-scalable=no
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#56Fixed bars are annoying and should rarely be used. But what's even worse is when the mobile version helpfully removes the content or feature that you'd like to see. Please just have one site, make it efficient, and be done with it.
I'm so happy that google is not officially recommending this. More than once that's been the one argument that worked with clients.
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#57What's worse is some sites that do this can't seem to differentiate between iPads and iPhones and seem to use percentages everywhere in their CSS. As a result, you get a huge header (which feels larger in landscape orientation).
I've had helpful 'popups' on mobile sites that I couldn't close because the close button was perpetually out of screen, as they were not designed for the small screen. To my surprise, I've seen this on a number of big sites.
It baffles me that nobody ever noticed this bug, but on the other hand I can see how this would happen. The developers probably never noticed because they already had the cookie that prevents the popup from showing. Still...
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#58They're a problem on non-mobile, as well. If the bar is over content, but the scrollbar isn't adjusted for it, pressing space or pagedown doesn't move down one page worth of visible content. I don't get why breaking pagedown is acceptable. It's my preferred way to read long text.
It is also my pet peeve. It is a big disadvantage, and I haven't ever needed the top bar (or wished it was there when there isn't one) so for me top bars are a feature with negative score.
I guess we spacebarers are a minority and most people use the mouse wheel or the down arrow.
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#59I don't get why these bars are being used everywhere, personally I find them annoying. Scrolling up takes like half a second...
> I don't get why these bars are being used everywhere
I Blame it on the design patterns of (Twitter) Bootstrap. A lot of sites are put together with it. Although the default nav-bar is not bolted to the top it is easy to read how to do that in the docs and implement it because it seems like a good idea at the time. Others, not using Bootstrap then copy the 'new convention'.
Personally I believe that for some content, e.g. a Tumblr style blog, the nav-bar at the top (and fixed) makes a lot of sense. If you also have pet-peeve infinite scroll (as many do on Tumblr blogs + Pinterest), then it is helpful to have a fixed header as there is no footer.
Re: The Scroll Up Bar
#60> An interesting way to solve the issue is to hide the bar when scrolling down, and show it when scrolling up.
No. When I scroll up, that's what I usually want to do: scroll up, see some content that is currently out of view. If that bar appears first, I have to swipe an inch more, which doesn't sound that horrible, but it results in an inconsistency between mental model (swipe down 1 inch, see what is 1 inch above) and technological reality (sorry, you need to scroll 2 inches!).
In the eBay Android app, where I want to quickly compare search results, this annoys the hell out of me.
One of the best things about touch interfaces is the natural mapping between mental model and technology. Let's not break this.