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There is no fold.

People involved with building public-facing web sites—not so much the designers, mind you, but most everybody else—often concern themselves with the importance of “the fold”: the idea that someone will look at a web page, completely ignore the scroll bar in the window, and make their own decision about how long the page is, based on how much content they can see in the window.

I have to assume that people who imagine that web pages have a fold also imagine that everybody on the planet who uses a computer is stupid, or even less likely, that the web browser is the only application that people use. Both imaginings, I contend, are false, and I’m pretty sure I could find some numbers to back up the second contention if you want to challenge me on what seems like a bleedin’ obvious claim.

Here’s why I think what I think: the scroll bar is everywhere. True, there’s no scroll bar in Minesweeper, Solitaire or Tetris, but there’s a reason for vertical scrolling in the vast majority of computer programs. Here’s a smattering of examples:

Browsing a list of applications:

a list of applications with a scroll bar

Browsing a list of artists:

a list of artists with a scroll bar

Writing:

a bunch of words with a scroll bar

If you’re going to try to tell me that a person looking at a web page doesn’t see the scroll bar and instantly know that there’s another screen full of content to look at, then you must also think that the same person would never see the rest of their applications, or the rest of their musicians, or, God forbid, the rest of the text in an open document.

Stop trying to tell me that people are stupid. I’m not buying it.

Comments [7]

6 August 2006, 00:55

  1. why did your article just quit in the middle?!? where is the rest of it?


    — hauself    6 August 2006, 08:04    #

  2. I didn’t read the article that you’re referring to, but I think that it IS true that anything “above the fold”, or at least at the top of a page where one doesn’t have to scroll to it, is going to get more attention than something that you do have to scroll to. But that’s kind of a given, right?


    — Darren Sussman    6 August 2006, 08:54    #

  3. Hauself: you know, I almost was worried there for a second. Good one. :)

    Darren: yes, that’s a slightly different argument, and I’m willing to admit that content near the top of the page gets more attention, but what seems wrong to me is the idea that content which doesn’t immediately appear hardly ever gets seen, especially if the visual design of the page has a clean horizontal end which matches up with the bottom of a “standard” browser window size.


    — Bryan    6 August 2006, 10:58    #

  4. I don’t think it has anything to do with people being stupid or that people don’t know they can scroll. It has to do with that difference in the amount of attention. Unfortunatley it’s not a small difference.


    — Chris Griego    6 August 2006, 20:59    #

  5. Chris: why would a person notice a scroll bar in Word and not in IE?


    — Bryan    6 August 2006, 21:18    #

  6. People really are stupid. I mean. People click on that stupid punching monkey banner ad! (Among other things.)

    That being said, I think Chris is right – I don’t think it much has to do with knowing/not knowing you can scroll. The “above the fold” has more to do with what grabs their attention. People glance at everything immediately available (“above the fold”) and decide whether or not the rest of the page is worth their time. I think that’s really what it’s about – making sure you catch their attention quickly.


    — .zannah.    7 August 2006, 18:58    #

  7. Bryan, it’s OK if you don’t believe me. You can do whatever you want in your designs and, trust me, I won’t lose a single night’s sleep. :-)

    When I said that people stop scrolling, that opinion came from watching several thousand people on hundreds of web sites. However, I never watched anyone use any of your sites, as far as I know. So, I can’t say if it happens on your site.

    Users who know how long something is will automatically scroll. If they are familiar with their Word document (or assume it has to be more than one page), they’ll scroll. Same is true for web pages. However, many pages look like they are only a single page and the users doesn’t assume there’s more.

    We do know, from observation, that people behave differently with different types if interface elements. The way they work with a listbox varies, based on their context, the presentation, and their current expectations.

    I’ve seen listbox interaction where people didn’t scroll. In the cases you cited, if the user has a pre-existing expectation there are more applications, musicians, etc, then they are more likely to seek out the scroll bar. That said, I’ve also seen instances when users were presented lists where they didn’t expect the choices to go beyond the single display (or the listbox designer got clever and had blank lines that lined up with the bottom) and the user didn’t notice the scroll bar, resulting in them not seeing all their choices.

    If you’re absolutely sure your users don’t have this problem, then feel free to ignore my opinions. On the other hand, if you’re not absolutely sure...


    — Jared M Spool    10 August 2006, 09:01    #