Outhouse › Annoyance › Screen and sound

Screen covered by fixed elements

Headers, footers, bars and banners that stay on screen wherever the visitor scrolls.

Why it matters

Content scrolls. Branding should not. A fixed header, a fixed promotion bar, a fixed footer and a fixed app banner hold the visitor's attention in place while the content they came for passes through a narrowing gap in the middle.

Engineers call that gap the letterbox. A fully optimised page delivers its article one line at a time, like a telegram.

How Outhouse measures it

Outhouse adds up how much of the viewport is covered by fixed or sticky elements larger than 2% of the screen. 35% or more scores in full.

This audit counts towards Annoyance, with a weight of 2. A category is 75% its two highest-scoring audits and 25% all of its audits, weighted, so a site is judged mostly on what it does most and partly on how many things it does.

How to improve your score

Install Anchor. Available on selected plans. See all products.

Related audits

• Autoplaying media: Video or audio that starts before anyone asked for it.
• Layout shifting under you: Content that moves after the visitor has started reading or reaching for a button.
• Script bloat: Script loaded per word of content.