Great article and I'd go farther, almost nothing should stick in place when I scroll the page, it should all scroll together.
The search bar and the buttons with it shouldn't stick to my screen when I scroll, it's basically acting like a piece of tape over my screen hiding content I actually want to see.
Those feed panels on the right side shouldn't stick in place either, as that just forces me to scroll alllllll the way to the bottom of the article, past both the content and the comments, to actually read the "More from Author" list of articles.
While being the only cadidate for good use of absolute positioning, the left side button panel still causes problems. When I click the ... more buttons button, the bottom of the tooltip is lost off the screen. If the panel wasn't absolutely positioned, I'd simply scroll the ... near the top of my screen so the whole tooltip has room. However, the design choice of fancy over practical denies me that option.
By a quirk of sizing and spacing and the amount of text in the footer, if I scroll to the very bottom of the page, past content and comments, the ... moves up just enough that I can see the Report Abuse link. If there was less text in the footer or one more Share to button, there would be no way for me to see the Report Abuse option. While this is obviously a bug with tooltips, it wouldn't actually be a problem if the left panel wasn't stuck in place.
So there we have three examples of absolutely positioned elements and all of them cause problems while not providing any real benefits beyond aesthetics.
I don't know if absolute positioning rises to the level of needing to be Considered Harmful, but it's definitely a foot gun that many webdevs seem to love firing at themselves.
Absolute positioning: just don't do it.
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Great article and I'd go farther, almost nothing should stick in place when I scroll the page, it should all scroll together.
The search bar and the buttons with it shouldn't stick to my screen when I scroll, it's basically acting like a piece of tape over my screen hiding content I actually want to see.
Those feed panels on the right side shouldn't stick in place either, as that just forces me to scroll alllllll the way to the bottom of the article, past both the content and the comments, to actually read the "More from Author" list of articles.
While being the only cadidate for good use of absolute positioning, the left side button panel still causes problems. When I click the ... more buttons button, the bottom of the tooltip is lost off the screen. If the panel wasn't absolutely positioned, I'd simply scroll the ... near the top of my screen so the whole tooltip has room. However, the design choice of fancy over practical denies me that option.
By a quirk of sizing and spacing and the amount of text in the footer, if I scroll to the very bottom of the page, past content and comments, the ... moves up just enough that I can see the Report Abuse link. If there was less text in the footer or one more Share to button, there would be no way for me to see the Report Abuse option. While this is obviously a bug with tooltips, it wouldn't actually be a problem if the left panel wasn't stuck in place.
So there we have three examples of absolutely positioned elements and all of them cause problems while not providing any real benefits beyond aesthetics.
I don't know if absolute positioning rises to the level of needing to be Considered Harmful, but it's definitely a foot gun that many webdevs seem to love firing at themselves.
Absolute positioning: just don't do it.