Squarespace Designer Eric Anderson (@esquareda) caught my attention yesterday with a tweet, “The year 2000 called and it wants it’s sidebar back.” Which proceeded to prompt a dialogue with my inner-web designer. Have sidebars gone the way of landing pages and flash navigations?
The sidebar was born out of the Web 2.0 era of web design that came with the boom of user-generated content and publishing platforms. Think early WordPress & Blogger type sites featuring universal sidebars full of nav items, relentless link rolls, archives, tags, and about a million other elements that merely serve as clutter for 99% of users. A junk-drawer for websites if-you-will. While the intent was to create SEO-friendly pages through a myriad of cross-links, the result burdened the user with disorder giving lazy designers a quick-fix in lieu of a well thought out page.
As web designers we should be constantly evolving and challenging ourselves to push past design tropes and conventions rethinking the digital landscape whenever possible. Now that we are no longer constrained to a set window size, thanks to responsive design, combined with a more mobile-first design approach, sidebars appear as ruins from a leftover age appearing in layouts suffering from poor content strategy and UX. While I can see the value of a sidebar in certain applications, e-commerce or anywhere you might need filtering functionality for instance, the days of strict 2-column layouts are quickly coming to an end.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.