Sticky table headers are no longer a stranger to an average website user — unlike on paper when a reader’s eyes can comfortably jump in saccades between top of a lengthy table and the rows of interest, the landscape orientation of most devices makes vertically-long tables hard to read. However, this very conundrum presents itself as a rich ground for UI experimentation that is not available to the printed media.

Sticky table headers, as their name implies, remains affixed to the top of the viewport even when the original table headers are scrolled out of view. They help to clarify the representation and purpose of data in columns when the visual reference to original table headers was lost. Besides that, the aid in orienting users in a sea of tabulated information, therefore avoiding the need to repeatedly, and frustratingly, scroll between the top of the table where the header resides, and the region of interest further down, typically lying out of the viewport.