[KnightWhoSaysNi]

"The most important change is that most navigation elements continue to be visible even when you scroll down. The navigation bar, the search box and the search options sidebar have a fixed position"

Strange that "position: fixed" hasn't found its way to popular websites before now. It's been supported by major browsers since the early zeroes (or late nineties?), the only exception being IE (for which you can easily make a fix).

Here's a page from ten years ago (!) describing "position: fixed": http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/menus

[acqq]

http://derstandard.at/ has fixed pieces of the interface for at least a few years but I really, really don't like it. Try it yourself. It looks good as long as you're actually not interested in the material inside. Unless you're designer of the site showing the features of the site to the boss, you're not likely to use the menus inside of the fixed areas. But this also explains why some sites end up having such interfaces. In my view, this is a sign of Google turning soggy inside as in:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2776046

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Like all features, "position: fixed" can be applied in useful ways and in not so useful ways. I agree that Der Standard's way of using it isn't too good, but overall fixed positions are an excellent feature if you ask me.