I would note that overflow is sometimes used as a shortcut to addressing an actual design problem in CSS. As pages are resized or text is enlarged designs can break. Simply adding overflow to a fixed height containing element is an easy way to ensure the overall layout stays somewhat intact when the viewer's system settings or personal preferences clash with the designers original intention. More often than not though when used improperly it doesn't actually address the problem at all. For instance if you enlarge the text in your browser within a narrow window the navigation becomes even less useful as you'll only be able to see half of the word at any given time due to the short fixed height.
Sure you could use some unobtrusive Javascript to make some sideways scrolling UI kick in once the window reaches a certain width but wouldn't be flexible to accommodate the viewer's preference in text size. I think a simpler solution would be to simply allow the containing element of the navigation to grow horizontally while having the menu items floating within it. When the window gets two narrow the content will just get pushed down as the nav box grows to become two visible rows large, etc.. That's pretty much what they've done but they apparently believe it's more important to ensure the content does not get pushed further down by a navigation that demands more vertical screen real-estate. I personally think it would be better to sacrifice some screen real- estate for low-res viewers over the current solution. Especially considering that even in a 1024x768 resolution enlarging the text breaks the navigation for these viewers as well. - Jim ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
