Even with CSS, frames suck

Asa has apparently decided it is a good idea to ignore or downplay complaints about the usability of his blog. He writes:

Some folks are complaining that my site doesn’t provide the same experience for folks on low-resolution systems. They’re right…. If … you can’t cope with the links over to the left not all showing up in your browser because your resolution is archaic then you’re in luck. I’ve constructed a special version of this site just for you.

[He then provides a link to view the source of the page.]

What he describes is a common problem with framed pages: web designers will set frames to have no scrollbars and just pretend that everyone uses the exact same screen resolution and font sizes that they do. This frequently causes inaccessible content just like that seen in Asa’s blog. But Asa isn’t using frames, he’s using the shiny new CSS (validated no less!) that is supposed to cure world hunger and bring world peace. Or something like that.

The problem is that CSS position: fixed elements (those blocks that act like frames) get overflow: visible by default. If they had overflow: auto they would get scrollbars when necessary. Asa could easily fix his blog by adding overflow: auto to the .leftcontent class in his style sheet. I hope he does. I understand people blog for the fun of it and that you can’t please everyone, but this is a trivial change that doesn’t fundamentally change his design.

It troubled me that at least with old framesets, if you didn’t do anything special, the default was to get scrollbars automatically if they were necessary. With the CSS replacement, you now need to add both position: fixed and overflow: auto to get the same behavior. I suspect that many designers using position: fixed will, because of ignorance, arrogance, forgetfulness, or by design, omit the overflow: auto and therefore create sites that have accessibility problems. This prompted me to file bug 164983. Too bad this isn’t a technically feasible solution. In bug 105796 mpt made a similar suggestion which would also help with frames.

I find it ironic that because IE doesn’t apparently support position: fixed, Asa’s blog is more usable in IE.