aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/build/sticky-elements/index.html
blob: f39fa55837cc2a63b77fc46f9be0b67c59bd2b06 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
	<meta charset="utf-8">
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
	<link rel="icon" href="data:,">
	<title>Stop Using Sticky Navigation on Mobile</title>
	<link href="/atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed for blog posts" />
	<link href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="RSS feed for blog posts" />
<style>*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1.33;margin:0 auto;max-width:650px;padding:1rem;}img{max-width:100%;}pre{border:1px solid;overflow:auto;padding:5px;}table{text-align:left;width:100%;}.footnotes{font-size:90%;}</style>
</head>

<nav>
	<a href="#menu">Menu &darr;</a>
</nav>

<main>
<h1 id="stop-using-sticky-navigation-on-mobile">Stop Using Sticky Navigation on Mobile</h1>

<p>2019-10-06</p>

<p>Stop styling your web elements to be &#8220;sticky&#8221; on mobile. This creates a horrible experience for your users and also looks like trash from a UI perspective. Don&#8217;t style your navigation (or any components for that matter) to be &#8220;sticky&#8221; on mobile. They create poor experiences for your users and take away valuable screen space.</p>

<h2 id="what-do-you-mean-by-sticky">What do you mean by &#8220;sticky&#8221;?</h2>

<p>The concept of <em>sticky</em> elements include but are not exclusive to:</p>

<ul>
<li>Navigations that follow users as they scroll</li>
<li>Chatbot prompt bubbles eating up half the bottom of the screen</li>
<li>Banners or modal prompts that pester the user to &#8220;sign up, accept cookies&#8221; etc.</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>These are bad and you should feel bad for implementing them.</strong> Spacing and layout is a critical part of a product’s design and greatly impacts the experience of its users. Stop screwing it up with ugly sticky elements.</p>

<p>First, let&#8217;s breakdown &#8220;sticky&#8221; navigations and why they&#8217;re terrible. We&#8217;ll also go over some easy solutions to avoid making these bad design decisions in the first place.</p>

<h2 id="the-stalking-navigation">The stalking navigation</h2>

<p>When you make a decision to eat away <code>&#62;50px</code> of space at the top of the page for your site&#8217;s navigation - you&#8217;re hurting your users. You&#8217;re also making their time interacting with your website more painful.</p>

<p>&#8220;Wait!&#8221; I hear sticky-nav defenders exclaim, &#8220;this navigation bar makes it so the user can <em>easily</em> interact with the site&#8217;s pages!&#8221;</p>

<p><strong>What absolute rubbish.</strong> A user should only see a website&#8217;s navigation when they <em>need to use it</em>. This isn&#8217;t rocket science.</p>

<p>Let&#8217;s a take a look at the problem:</p>

<p>Knowing when to show navigation can be easily solved where the user isn&#8217;t bogged down with a chunk of their screen permanently taken away, all the while still having access to the navigation. This can be fixed by simply understanding the user context at a given time. See below:</p>

<p>Here the navigation flows up with the rest of the page as the user scrolls the main content into view. Don&#8217;t worry about creating confusion - the user knows the navigation is still at the top of the page because they <em>watched it scroll out of view</em>. This is best paired by having a matching navigation in the footer of the page as well. That way, when the user makes it to the end of a specific view they can change pages right in the &#8220;footer&#8221;. No need to scroll back to the top.</p>

<h2 id="the-best-of-both-worlds">The best of both worlds?</h2>

<p>Maybe you want to hide the navigation without losing the flexibility of it always being accessible at the top of the page? This is possible, although I find it still <em>somewhat</em> intrusive on the user. An easy way achieve this is by displaying the navigation when users perform a specific action, such as:</p>

<ul>
<li>Long or multiple upward swipes on the page</li>
<li>Pull down menu from top of current view (easily shown to user)</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="navigations-arent-the-only-culprits">Navigations aren&#8217;t the only culprits</h2>

<p>I wish that navigation items were the only sinners of the &#8220;sticky&#8221; position on mobile - but they are not alone. A few other problematic components include:</p>

<ul>
<li>Chatbot or support &#8220;bubbles&#8221;</li>
<li>&#8220;Agree to our cookies&#8221; prompts</li>
<li>Time-based pop-up modals</li>
</ul>

<p>Every time you implement one of these components, somewhere in the world a puppy dies. Seriously - don&#8217;t be part of the problem and build these things. Push back on &#8220;marketing research&#8221; or team leads who tell you that this crap works. You&#8217;re making the mobile web worse for everyone and setting a terrible precedent for future developers.</p>

<p>Stay <em>static</em>, my friends!</p>
<footer role="contentinfo">
    <h2>Menu Navigation</h2>
    <ul id="menu">
        <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/projects">Projects</a></li>
        <li><a href="/uses">Uses</a></li>
        <li><a href="/wiki">Wiki</a></li>
        <li><a href="/resume">Resume</a></li>
        <li><a href="/colophon">Colophon</a></li>
        <li><a href="/now">Now</a></li>
        <li><a href="/donate">Donate</a></li>
        <li><a href="/atom.xml">RSS</a></li>
        <li><a href="#top">&uarr; Top of the page</a></li>
    </ul>
    <small>
        Built with <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/barf">barf</a>. <br>
        Maintained with ♥ for the web. <br>
        Proud supporter of <a href="https://usefathom.com/ref/DKHJVX">Fathom</a> &amp; <a href="https://nextdns.io/?from=74d3p3h8">NextDNS</a>. <br>
        The content for this site is <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA</a>.<br> The <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht">code for this site</a> is <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht/tree/master/item/LICENSE">MIT</a>.
    </small>
</footer>