floating menu

[Macnoviz]

I was just wondering what your opinion was on "floating" menus, the ones that scroll along the webpage. I'm not very into all those do's and don'ts of webdesign, so could you guys enlighten me?

 

[angelwatt]

I see two main categories for the floating menus, ones powered by Javascript (typical) and ones powered by CSS (not compatible with older IE). The JS kind I don't like because it's distracting because it always has to reposition itself as I scroll the page and I've left pages just because of it. The CSS ones don't have jerky movement (at least ones I've built don't) so they are fine with me. There can be some accessibility issues with it though for some screen readers since they're usually done by setting position:absolute, and those elements don't get read by the screen reader (not all screen readers behave this way).

That's my 2¢.

 

[zarathustra]

There can be some accessibility issues with it though for some screen readers since they're usually done by setting position:absolute, and those elements don't get read by the screen reader (not all screen readers behave this way).

That's my 2¢.

Actually they are usually set by "position: fixed;"

IE6 or earlier will ignore it and behave as if you used "position:absolute;"

I assume that your page is semantically correct (you use the correct tag for the correct content) and that the design scales and gracefully degrades.

In that case it is not a big deal if your navigation stays put (absolute) on browsers that don't support it, and behaves correctly on others. If it makes your site hard to or impossible to navigate, it should be avoided.

 

[jonnylink]

...If it makes your site hard to or impossible to navigate, it should be avoided.

....yeah, what he said.