the page fold myth

Tags: Design
October 21, 2009 by Steven

I don't know how I missed this post by Joe Leech from mid-September, but I did until Barbara tweeted it the other week. I also can't believe that I'd never talked about it anywhere like here before; fighting the myth of the page fold, and working on currently-relevant design-for-scrolling is something I actually spend a fair bit of time doing on pretty much every project.

The "page fold" comes from newspapers. "Above the fold" is what is visible on the newsstand, and what grabs you to make you buy it. The same concept carried through to early web design, and worked okay I guess when everyone's screen was the same size.

Those days are gone, and with different browsers, zooming, scaling, and all the variations multiplied again for new platforms like mobile it's an interesting field to look at. The link above talks a lot about how users perceive pages to understand scrolling. That /is/ interesting design to work on and stuff everyone has to keep in mind.

I think I know this topic pretty well, but just talking around the office, others brought up topics I knew perfectly well, but had forgotten to include. So far, we have these topics to help design for successful scrolling:

And maybe you know more about some particular trouble. If so, especially for mobile, don't comment here in the blog. We set up a longer version of all this up on the Design for Mobile wiki. Please go to the Myth of the Page Fold page, set up an account, and add your content. Or expand on my notes.

Even if you just have an opinion, thought, question or concern, this wiki is a great place to bring it up. Add it to the topic or (if not final yet) talk page.


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