Application Customizers Feedback

[theitfactor]

This feedback pertains to the Application Customizers that allow for Top and Bottom placeholders. In their current state I feel they are somewhat useless and lack the necessary ability to overwrite the out of the box navigation.

Let's start with the Top placeholder. If you add this to a team site you are going to potentially have FIVE navigation elements on the page. (Hub navigation, Site Navigation, Local Navigation, Custom Top Placeholder, Global Navigation) I think the top Suite bar (Waffle) is a necessary and untouchable area of the page that allows users to traverse across the M365 ecosystem. But, why can't we allow the Top Placeholder to overwrite the site navigation so that we can provide our own, more robust navigation such as Type-head searching, real-time results, custom flyouts and mobile menus? Today, we do this by creating our own navigation using the features above and use SPComponentLoader to load in some CSS that hides the OOTB navigation. I don't want to have to do this as it is "Unsupported" but we don't have another option. I just don't see the utility in me adding another row above the OOTB navigation. I think most users and developers would expect that our ability to put content in these area should include a way to hide/overwrite the OOTB elements.

As far as the bottom placeholder, I don't know how anyone would ever use this. I have talked with several designers and read multiple threads online who are baffled at the fact this footer is sticky at the bottom of every page. It eats up screen real-estate and actually covers up the important page content. I have never seen a portal or website that makes their footer always visible? This is where lower value content is located that users can see when they reach the end of a page. We should still be able to put in our own custom elements and content here, it just shouldn't be sticky.

It seems that Microsoft it continuing to force certain aspects on customers. I understand that providing a level of responsiveness and performance is important but to me a lot of the new experiences, tools and NavBars are composed experiences that assume every customer is using the tools the same way. In my experience that is just not the case.