Scroll fades
A gradient mask at the edge of a scrolling region reads as blur on the content, and blur on content is the one thing I will not do to a screen.
The collection on this site had soft fades at the top and bottom of its scrolling arrangement for a week. They kept stacks clear of the header and footer, and they arrived over the same curve as the reflow so nothing was ever cut mid-travel. I removed them the day I looked at them properly. The artwork under the fade went soft, and soft artwork is a worse outcome than artwork passing behind a control.
What replaces them: the controls that sit over content wear glass, and the content passes behind them with a hard edge. Where text sits over content and glass would be too much, an opaque band is honest and crisp.
- Content is never blurred, faded or filtered to make room for chrome
- Chrome over content: glass for controls, opaque for text bands
- If the edge needs softening, the layout is wrong, not the mask