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Mobile nav scrolls horizontally with no affordance; Search sits off-edge #7

Description

@willhea

Summary

At 375px the main nav scrolls horizontally, placing "Search" partly beyond the right edge with no visual cue that more items exist. The item is reachable, so this is a discoverability question rather than a defect.

Evidence (rendered DOM at 375x812, live production)

The nav <ul> computes overflow-x: auto with scrollWidth 398 vs clientWidth 347.

"Search" renders at left 361 / right 412 against a 375px viewport, so roughly 37px sits past the edge on first paint.

Setting ul.scrollLeft to its maximum brings the item fully into view (right becomes 361, fully visible). Nothing is clipped or unreachable, and the document itself never scrolls horizontally: document.documentElement.scrollWidth equals clientWidth at 375 on every page checked.

Assessment

This is PaperMod behaving as designed. A scrollable nav is a reasonable response to a narrow viewport, and the alternative layouts (wrapping, collapsing to a menu) carry their own tradeoffs.

The only substantive critique is that there is no affordance signalling that the nav scrolls, such as a fade or partial-item peek. A user may not discover that Search exists. Whether that matters depends on how much the nav search is relied on versus the / keyboard shortcut and in-page navigation.

Filed for a decision, not because anything is broken. Closing as "working as intended" is a legitimate outcome.

Verification method

Playwright against production, reading computed styles and scroll geometry, plus a scroll-recovery test to confirm reachability.

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