Hacker News Reader

Comment by duopixel | Hacker News Reader

I really like the redesign, but fixed headers are driving me nuts. When I read my eyes fix on the top portion of the webpage, when a fixed header is there I feel like I must retrain myself to start reading a little bit below the header.

I've noticed I don't mind fixed footers, they are not within my natural reading area.

View on HN

My major problem is if I hit the space bar or Page Down button, the first lines of text are hidden behind the banner.

I wrote a brief comment on this issue (and a proposed solution) a few weeks ago: http://gist.io/4950242

Fixed headers are terrible. I once asked a whole room of designers if any of them could think of a single design they liked that used a fixed header, and none could.

I think fixed web site headers are one of those things that looked cool/new/snazzy so they were adopted as a matter of fashion rather than usability. I should go look and see if there are any studies done on them...

This is interesting... I always read at the bottom of the page vs. the top of the page. I wonder if the style of fixed border elements really will train us to read more near the center?

I wonder why that is- after all, we've gotten used to tab bars, menu bars, etc being fixed at the top of windows.

I think the difference is that those are truly fixed. They never move. "Fixed" top menus on web pages, in my experience, always stutter at least a little bit. I find it distracting.

They do? I agree that fixed headers that are repositioned on scroll events shudder noticeably, but when headers have a fixed positioned via CSS I haven't seen this (e.g. Facebook and Twitter's implementations).

Fixed "anything" is driving me nuts. In my opinion nothing fixed should be on the page.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com