FWIW, I'm on desktop but I do have JS disabled (more precisely, I use NoScript). This results in the top and left-side bars staying decorative and unobtrusive,

FWIW, I'm on desktop but I do have JS disabled (more precisely, I use NoScript). This results in the top and left-side bars staying decorative and unobtrusive, but the concurrent visitor counter thingy is floating well above the bottom-right of the page. But then, as I shrink in the page width, the left-side bar and the concurrent visitor counter swap sides, and also a bunch of the content from the top is added to a new bar at the bottom. Eventually, the horizontal space between the side components becomes irrelevant such that they function as an additional bottom bar. At which point, maybe 40% of the vertical space is used for navigation and other shiny toys. This is really annoying, and the overall experience is inconsistent across widths. (Also, at all widths, the top-bar has a transparent background, so main page text interferes with top-bar text as it scrolls.) All of this is done in CSS, so presumably it can be fixed that way too.