This works based on the timeline’s distance from the bottom of the page, specifically we have an empty container called topic-bottom below the last post. When the timeline passes this, it becomes “docked” and the controls are hidden.
When a browser window is tall enough, and there isn’t enough content below the topic footer controls, you might not ever reach this state.
Here’s an example… in this tall browser window, this is as low as my timeline can get… there’s no more content to scroll
But if I make my window shorter, I need to scroll more to reach the bottom, and if it’s short enough… this will make the buttons disappear.
One possible path for improvement that comes to mind would be to hide the buttons in the timeline based on the distance from the footer buttons rather than the end of the topic (this could end up being more complicated than it’s worth in practice though).
Doing that would mean that my first screenshot above would still show both, which might be ok because there’s a greater distance between the two… and it would probably be a little more controllable in situations like this one below, where they’re close, but haven’t passed yet… and it makes sense to hide them
