Damian Stephens — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:33:43 GMT

It’s funny that I’ve found this article now…

I’ve just had to re-design the homepage of an online travel agency so that all the search functionality (navigation, destination input fields, calendar, return / one-way selection, total days, travellers and submit button(s)) fits above the fold for users with 800×600 monitor resolution, despite the fact that only 3.6% of the company’s customers have their monitors set to this resolution – the rest being higher.

interestingly, of all the major OTAs (online travel agencies), only kayak.com attempts to fit the search functionality above the fold for users with 800×600 resolution.

undertaking this exercise made me question whether users with lower resolutions would really be put off using a site if key functionality went below their fold and they had to scroll to complete a task (as long as it was obvious that the functionality continued below the fold), or if they would simply click away (as the CEO feared). in this instance, 800×600 users would only have kayak.com to go to if they really hadn’t mastered the scroll.

it also made me wonder what the impact of having a design compact enough to be viewed within such tight dimensions would be on the majority of users with higher resolutions. i wonder if there are any studies to show the user experience impact of small, fiddly or busy designs on users with large resolution monitors? if we’re talking from a design or branding point of view ‘small’, ‘busy’ and ‘cramped’ aren’t good adjectives.

i have always believed that people with lower resolution monitors must be used to scrolling by now – their experience of the web is by necessity a scrolly one.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Damian Stephens