Comments on: Fearing the fold

By: Josh Walsh

Josh Walsh — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:14:14 +0000

I think Paul is right on with this. I often have discussed the question of "Above the fold" with my clients. His response is right on by saying that the question is not even about the fold, it's about the usability of scrollbars. http://www.designinginteractive.com/2007/09/12/forget-about-the-fold/

By: ichigo

ichigo — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 15:42:49 +0000

great article...really appreciated the read!

By: Chris Heilmann

Chris Heilmann — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 00:20:33 +0000

“Reading text is hard enough on screen anyway without additional eye strain caused by excessive line length.”
Is true, but I consider the argument that text is too long to read rather useless, as it IS easy to make your browser smaller, whereas is is hard to scroll aroud on a low resolution, or even a zoomed part of the screen.
As mentioned before, not all users surf with their browsers open to the full extend of the screen, especially on Macs that is quite uncommon.
One thing I keep battling about with our designers is huge mood images, socalled “hero shots” taking over a lot of vertical space before you reach the main content of the site. While those rock the brand on home pages and section landing pages, they really get annoying when you surf around the site for longer. One option would be to offer a link to get rid of them – things some people do with AdBlock anyway :-)

By: Paul Boag

Paul Boag — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 15:17:56 +0000

Not sure things are that black and white Peter. Pixels allow control over the layout that no scalable site would ever provide. You might argue that this is ego on the part of the designer who doesn't want his design "messed up" but some of the issues are usability orientated too. Take for example this web site. If this site was scalable and filled the whole window at say 1270x1024 it would be almost unreadable because of the ridiculously long line length. Reading text is hard enough on screen anyway without additional eye strain caused by excessive line length.

By: Peter Buchy

Peter Buchy — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 13:13:15 +0000

The biggest problem I see with most sites is a designers fixation on pixel sizes for layout. I hate to say it, but as far as different browsers go, that's almost as bad as designing with tables. A far more reasonable idea is to specify with combinations of percentages and ems. It allows you to develop sites that use the space their given (percentages), but also lets you develop items that need to be certain sizes relative to each other (ems). Plus, unlike when everything is specified in pixels, the user can scale the page, making text and layouts larger or smaller.

By: Jon Dowland

Jon Dowland — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 15:37:45 +0000

Regarding screen sizes: In my case, larger monitors have meant I don’t have to maximize my browser – so often my display area is 800×600 or less (well, less horizontally, but very few sites work at x Regarding screen sizes: In my case, larger monitors have meant I don’t have to maximize my browser – so often my display area is 800×600 or less (well, less horizontally, but very few sites work at x < 800)

By: Jon Dowland

Jon Dowland — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 15:36:32 +0000

I didn't realise the zen garden had a book out, thanks! The zen garden is really an excellent demonstration of what can be achieved. Of course, the XHTML is littered with an above-average number of hooks to make this possible. I'm starting to think less and less that this is a bad thing though. Regarding scrolling: When did scroll-wheel mice get really prevalent? I don't think they were that common until this century. That might account for the slide in acceptability.

By: Leigh.

Leigh. — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 09:45:44 +0000

I agree that more users are ready to scroll. If we never make them scroll then maybe they will never learn.
However, there are some sites, such as news sites where I like to see a lot of information all in one go within the fold, News sites are a good example where I want to see a quick visual overview of what’s going on – akin to being able to see the whole picture in a glance.
Whilst I don’t believe we should pack everything into the top of a page, it’s still where all the more important elements should live as the page should be a hierarchy from top to bottom.

By: Paul Boag

Paul Boag — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 09:39:11 +0000

hmm... I am not sure. I guess it will depend on the stats for the individual site. However just because people have an office PC that can run higher than 800x600 doesnt mean they do. A lot of people find the icons/text too small at higher resolutions so purposely set their resolution lower.

By: Marcus

Marcus — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 09:28:49 +0000

I agree entirely and would go as far to say that with certain sites where the audience is, say, entirely office based, one could assume a right hand vertical page fold for 800x600 users! I.e. 800x600 users would have to side scroll to view a right hand column of less important content.