Revisiting "The Fold"(codinghorror.com)
codinghorror.com
Revisiting "The Fold"
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001307.html
10 comments
Design is an art, so there won't be rigid rules that apply to every situation. This should come as no surprise. Personally, I know how to scroll, but I like being able to read a lot of the content before scrolling.
On a side note, my pet peeve is a design that requires scrolling immediately but also auto-selects an input field so I can't page-down when the page loads.
On a side note, my pet peeve is a design that requires scrolling immediately but also auto-selects an input field so I can't page-down when the page loads.
Its fun to watch a bunch of programmers struggle with design. They're learning/blogging about pretty obvious problems that most designers don't even remember solving and usually fix subconsciously.
I personally find these blog posts a little boring. This was the kind of stuff I used to deal with as a designer daily for a media site 5+ years ago. And frankly, none of it is as hard as they make it out to be. They need to hire a good designer and be done with it.
I personally find these blog posts a little boring. This was the kind of stuff I used to deal with as a designer daily for a media site 5+ years ago. And frankly, none of it is as hard as they make it out to be. They need to hire a good designer and be done with it.
No offense, but I don't think the post was direct towards you.
It's like when Smashing Magazine puts out "here's how you write a 5-line JavaScript" function. The post is obviously directed towards designers with little programming knowledge/skill, and it would be boring to most programmers, but most of them realize that and don't litter the comments with "This is easy, I knew this when I was 12 years old. Just hire a developer."
It's called spreading the knowledge and targeting different content at different folks.
It's like when Smashing Magazine puts out "here's how you write a 5-line JavaScript" function. The post is obviously directed towards designers with little programming knowledge/skill, and it would be boring to most programmers, but most of them realize that and don't litter the comments with "This is easy, I knew this when I was 12 years old. Just hire a developer."
It's called spreading the knowledge and targeting different content at different folks.
Next thing you know this place will be called Hacker News instead of Designer News. Kidding; both your and the parent's points are well taken.
Patrick tells us everything we need to know about "revisiting 'the fold'"- we don't, it's still there, and it's still important.
Go upvote him: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=840972
Go upvote him: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=840972
That's totally true, though it may depend on the sort of web site you have. The company I work for is in the comparison shopping space, which tends to have a high bounce rate and get a lot of traffic from google. Putting something above the fold has a huge effect if it makes a few percent more people stay and interact with the site.
Though my initial impression of the article was that he was saying 'the fold is bunk', which I'd disagree with, I think he wrapped it up clearly with advice on how to pay the right attention to what is above the fold.