I know a lot of people who still owns and use an iPhone earlier than the iPhone 4. And one thing to note is that these devices haven’t yet support for position: fixed (at least not natively).

I’m currently sketching a redesign for my site¹. Using position: fixed as an essential part of the redesign is not a good idea. For now it should only be as an enhancement for the design.

If I have an element thats fixed at the top, it will probably work fine. If position: fixed doesn’t work due to support, you’d still have the that element scrolling with the rest of the content and not in the way of everything else.

But if I were to place an element somewhere in the bottom—and this was in a form of a tab controller or Foote—then the element will be static in its initial position, always on top and scrolling along with the rest of the content. In short I would end up in a broken design.

Just a thought that I’d like to remind myself when sketching the—new—layout is to keep asking myself “how will this look with position: fixed supported?” and “how will this look without position: fixed supported?“.

I threw the (draft that I thought had a) promising layout that I have been working on for weeks, when I remembered about the type of devices that I’d want to suppport. But its ok, I think its better loosing 20 drafts rather than redoing a design that I thought was finished.

Like all people working on the web, I’d like to support every device. I’d like my site to say “Hey dude! you have an iPhone, Cool!” to the readers of my site² regardless if one has an iPhone 4s or the original iPhone.

But I think its only fair (and this applies to almost everything is) to give a slightly better experience to users with the high-end model. But this doesn’t give us excuses to deliver a trashy experience to users who can’t afford the high-end model.

My site’s design is towards a good reading experience to users by delivering content without the extra clutter. If I can get away with removing the logo and the navigation, I would—but they each serve a purpose—so that all a reader sees is the article.

That is why (position: fixed a) style should never intervene with how a web site works.

1. I know its still less than a year, but this redesign will focus on layout rather than style. ↩
2. This only applies to users with an iPhone but not limited to the iPad users. ↩