Article Idea:
Comment on Blasting the Myth of the Fold (suggested by Christina Wodtke)
suggested by Eric Reiss on 2007/07/26
Eric said
“Your very last paragraph about the bottom of the page being “the next frontier” is perhaps the most valuable advice of all; when people are through reading, give them a logical place to continue their journey. Like a magician forcing a card on an unsuspecting audience member, good websites discreetly create linear flows through their site. Visitors choose to follow your contextual lead, even though they have the option to move about freely.
I hope you’ll write this article, too, someday. In the meantime, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences.”
and I agree—Christina
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laurie kalmanson
14 Reputation points
Posted 2007/07/29 @ 08:00AM with
I’m going to draw three circles: one is “fashions/trends”, one is “the fold” and the middle, overlapping one is, as always, “what users need”
way back in the beginning, the trend was to divide content into pages with a > or “more” for next; that was back when pageload really really mattered
then the trend shifted to scrolling; loading 500 more words didn’t matter anymore and a scroll was taken to be less interruptive than a click
now, we’re hearing again about “keeping everything important above the fold”
i actually feel that scrolling is common and accepted, and discussions about above/below the fold are actually a shorthand for saying that there are some key design elements that maybe should be rethought
that said, let me just add for the record that the original desgin of usa today the newspaper and usa today the vending box was intended to mimic the tv screen … so clinging too tightly to notions of above/below the fold is actually incorporating a design theory that takes the devil’s box as its guiding metaphor