Nav & Headers are bad for content. duh.
Let me read the content in peace!
FACT: We are all have ADD tendencies when surfing the internets. Its how you go from “lets wikipedia that character on game of thrones” to being a expert of Westeros and the 7 kingdoms in 10 hours and 99999 links later.
Content’s primary job to be done is “TO BE READ AND UNDERSTOOD”. Content that has less distraction and focuses the reader does a better job.
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Sendgrid, the literal USPS of the internet deliver emails like a boss, made their blog post 100pixels more readable and less distracting and as a result has 100pixels more of my hard earned developer ADD prone focus.
But… What about the other 99 links I want to send them to?
Don’t. All the options of navbar and header are somehwat helpful when a user lands on blog piece but not after they decide to consume your content. If you give them 99 the warp pipes they may never come back.
Case: Sendgrid’s blog.
This is a great example of giving a user everything on the outset.
All I see are exit signs.
before I have a chance to process the headline yet alone the opening paragraph I’m bombarded with exit signals and distractions.
They recently implemented hiding the navbar on scroll down which makes their content a bazillion times better when I want to focus in.
The moment the reader wants to exit they just have to make the move to scroll back up again. An additional improvement might be if they subtly centered their content and slightly hid their side widgets. (I’m looking for a good example out there that does this)
Case #2 : Safari on IOS
Want to read? Menus disappear like magic.
There are some simple libraries that will help you implement this behavior on your site. a recently popular one is headroom.js is that it hides the distraction when they make the simple decision to scroll down.
Last Case: Medium
Medium, this site you are reading this one, does one of the best jobs at not distracting you. Seriously, did you even notice the navigation options? Did you click on another relevant article until you hit the bottom which you are about to do? Did you hit 99 other links before getting to this sentence? probably not. simplify the cruft around your content. We have enough distractions already IRL.
tldr — hide header when I scroll down and want to view the content
