Are you designing a fold into your pages? If you design around viewport height and position:fix things to the bottom of the screen, then there absolutely is a fold and users will be biased to things above the fold. If your content clearly doesn't end at the bottom of a page, users are perfectly capable of and willing to scroll down to find the rest of the content.
This is primarily an issue I've seen with my students' work. They haven't always internalized the issues with folds, and the need to design around them to make sure that there appears to be a continuous flow of content.
Saying something like "There is no fold" is not going to help students recognize the issue.
This is true and it isn't true. It depends on context. What content are you placing? Who needs to see it? What kind of mentality will they be in when they're looking for it? In a rush or browsing? All of these factors will determine what kind of placement is optimal.
If you're talking about an info box with a CTA in it, maybe it doesn't need to be near the top of the page or viewable on initial load.
But if you're a service based company, and you're talking about a support link, having it anywhere other than prominently displayed immediately on page load is going to aggravate your customers. In that case there is definitely "a fold."
The fact that there's 4k different devices viewing your page doesn't change the fact that their browser window has a bottom, it just means that the location of that bottom is volatile. If you really care, your page design can be responsive to not just the width of the browser window but the height as well.
Abusing the concept of a fold is lazy and ignorant. It shouldn't be treated like the only aspect of web browsing that matters. But at the same time, ignoring the fact that some of your content will be immediately viewable to users upon loading the page and other content won't, is also lazy and ignorant.
Please label your axes. The units are not obvious.
I think the x-axis is pixels, where 0 is the top of the viewable part of the browser, and increases downward, but it took me a long time to figure that out. (My initial guess was milliseconds into a page view, but that makes no sense since I assume the y-axis on the second graph is seconds into engagement.)
Sounds like a justification for that horrible Wordpress theme with small blocks of text in a huge font, alternating with images that scroll at a different rate than the text.
The concept of the fold is a valuable and flexible one, to be interpreted within the context of the page or platform on which it is supposed to exist. Organizing and prioritizing presentation of data relies on recognizing certain patterns of display and activity, and the fold is wrapped up in that. Why try to deny the existence of a well-known and useful term and construct rather than help redefine it, the way we've done with other terms dating from the relatively distant past? (edit:sp)
"The fold" is where a newspaper folds in half. Unless your users are folding their computers in half, it really has no place in digital screen design. I agree that the closer to the top of a document you place something, the more prominence it has, but this has nothing at all to do with a "fold."
In digital content, "the fold" has its own meaning (which is, certainly, inspired by the literal fold in newspaper.)
This is one of many digital design that are inspired by terms from print, like "page" (which also is inappropriate for digital if you take the print meaning literally.)
And, anyway, laptop users do fold their computers in half, but that's a completely different thing.
> In digital content, "the fold" has its own meaning
Does it? I suppose it could mean "outside the first screen", as in on the next "card" in a mobile "slide deck", or "below the scroll" in a browser (that is: content that is on the virtual page, but outside the viewport).
But my impression is that people are not using it like that -- in which case "the fold" is probably a poor/wrong metaphor/term?
> This is one of many digital design that are inspired by terms from print, like "page" (which also is inappropriate for digital if you take the print meaning literally.)
Not really. In (magazine/newspaper) print, a page typically holds various assorted content. Especially so for the front page. Now, with scrolling, "page" will often mean "all of a document at a given URL" -- and that would typically be different from a print page. In that case "viewport" would be more appropriate. But I think the confusion really lies in the print world: "page" means both "what the user can see at any one time" (viewport) and "largest section of connected layout" (the physical page).
> And, anyway, laptop users do fold their computers in half, but that's a completely different thing.
But mobile users did, at least for a while. There were/are some phones with a small screen on the back of the "flip". AFAIK all of these only have enough real-estate for a small icon and simple scrolling text message though. And aren't really meant for showing a preview of some random web page, but rather to alert the user to incomming email etc.
"The fold" in the browser is the bottom of the first screen, below the fold is everything you need to scroll to see. This is what you mean... So what is it you think other people mean? I've never seen anything to indicate otherwise.
Well, I didn't have the impression that it had a clear, and universally accepted definition in web design, akin to what it has in print. To some extent wikipedia seems to agree with me (that it can mean no just "above the scroll", but also "upper part" or "first 1000px" etc): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_fold#In_web_design
Not that that means much.
So that part of the comment wasn't just a rhetorical question. Are there any well-known, more canonical definitions of "the fold" as used in web design? Does it make sense in the current climate of wildly varying designs for desktop and mobile?
More accurately seen from the perspective of the layout designer and the desires of the content editor, "the fold" is actually the point where the content itself is divided by a re-configuration of the container (newspaper/magazine/brochure) by the reader. In print, the reader modifies the form of the instrument by physical folding; in the case of online/digital the fold of content occurs more as a result of window size/zoom preferences of the user. Calling the point where your content is sliced -in half or otherwise- a "fold" works in that context; but it cannot be argued that there aren't more appropriate phrases for the term. Its just that this publishing business is an active one, and hasn't .. you know .. only been around in the last 5 or so years. Actually, 'the fold' is probably over a hundred years old as a term, incidentally, but I would have no idea how to prove it .. ("Above the fold", its Shakespeare, isn't it?)
Sadly, because tweetstorms are getting more and more popular. I think it gives people a superiority feeling ("aha, look at how much brilliance I can convey in so few characters!"), whereas the reader is just frustrated.
100% this! I'm seeing more and more tweets that are entire pages of text in JPEG format. I can't really say it's a failed medium, because obviously Twitter has massive usage, but it doesn't really seem like progress.
It's not so much that there is no fold as that there are a zillion folds. Where the content of a page rolls down off the bottom of the screen depends on so many things: display size, resolution, browser window size, browser chrome, add-ons, toolbars, etc. etc. etc...
So I always find it a bit amusing to hear people talk in the Web context about "above the fold." Oh, that goes above the fold? OK, which one?
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[ 0.69 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadI highly doubt we'd see the same breakdown for new users vs. return users. IE, return-users know they can scroll, new-users don't have that knowledge.
Saying something like "There is no fold" is not going to help students recognize the issue.
If you're talking about an info box with a CTA in it, maybe it doesn't need to be near the top of the page or viewable on initial load.
But if you're a service based company, and you're talking about a support link, having it anywhere other than prominently displayed immediately on page load is going to aggravate your customers. In that case there is definitely "a fold."
The fact that there's 4k different devices viewing your page doesn't change the fact that their browser window has a bottom, it just means that the location of that bottom is volatile. If you really care, your page design can be responsive to not just the width of the browser window but the height as well.
Abusing the concept of a fold is lazy and ignorant. It shouldn't be treated like the only aspect of web browsing that matters. But at the same time, ignoring the fact that some of your content will be immediately viewable to users upon loading the page and other content won't, is also lazy and ignorant.
I think the x-axis is pixels, where 0 is the top of the viewable part of the browser, and increases downward, but it took me a long time to figure that out. (My initial guess was milliseconds into a page view, but that makes no sense since I assume the y-axis on the second graph is seconds into engagement.)
Just Wordpress? I think you're describing every web site designed since 2008 there.
This is one of many digital design that are inspired by terms from print, like "page" (which also is inappropriate for digital if you take the print meaning literally.)
And, anyway, laptop users do fold their computers in half, but that's a completely different thing.
Does it? I suppose it could mean "outside the first screen", as in on the next "card" in a mobile "slide deck", or "below the scroll" in a browser (that is: content that is on the virtual page, but outside the viewport).
But my impression is that people are not using it like that -- in which case "the fold" is probably a poor/wrong metaphor/term?
> This is one of many digital design that are inspired by terms from print, like "page" (which also is inappropriate for digital if you take the print meaning literally.)
Not really. In (magazine/newspaper) print, a page typically holds various assorted content. Especially so for the front page. Now, with scrolling, "page" will often mean "all of a document at a given URL" -- and that would typically be different from a print page. In that case "viewport" would be more appropriate. But I think the confusion really lies in the print world: "page" means both "what the user can see at any one time" (viewport) and "largest section of connected layout" (the physical page).
> And, anyway, laptop users do fold their computers in half, but that's a completely different thing.
But mobile users did, at least for a while. There were/are some phones with a small screen on the back of the "flip". AFAIK all of these only have enough real-estate for a small icon and simple scrolling text message though. And aren't really meant for showing a preview of some random web page, but rather to alert the user to incomming email etc.
Not that that means much.
So that part of the comment wasn't just a rhetorical question. Are there any well-known, more canonical definitions of "the fold" as used in web design? Does it make sense in the current climate of wildly varying designs for desktop and mobile?
So I always find it a bit amusing to hear people talk in the Web context about "above the fold." Oh, that goes above the fold? OK, which one?