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position: fixed update

I redid the CSS2 tests in the mobile browsers; that is, the declarations that were never added to a CSS3 module. Since position: fixed is part of my CSS2 tests, it’s time for an update.

Last time we saw a budding consensus on position: fixed, and in compatible browsers really the only problem was that the fixed layers grew or shrank when the user zoomed, only to snap to the correct dimensions after the zoom was done.

That problem, too, has now been solved in several browsers. Chrome, Opera, Tizen, and the Nintendo browser now all do it right. Here’s the video so you can see for yourself (Chrome 31 on Nexus 7):

The second category of browsers, those who hold to snapping the layer to the right dimension after the zoom is done, consists of Android 4, older Chromes, BlackBerry 10, UC9, Dolphin, One, and Firefox on Android (but not FF OS).

Here’s Android 4:

The other browsers either have severe bugs, or don’t support position: fixed at all. This includes Safari on iOS, which holds to its idiosyncratic implementation that doesn’t make sense from a theoretical perspective, and not from a practical one, either, now that we have correct implementations.

Here’s Safari:

So things are looking up for position: fixed. Once Safari drops its oddness we can actually use it.