If I take my copy of The Washington Post and put it down on the table while I go get a sandwich, when I return to finish reading it, the content on the front page has not changed. I am not able to resize the text of it to make it more legible. I can't shrink the paper it's printed on until it's the size of my cell phone or enlarge it until it's as wide as two large televisions. If all of that is true, then why do we continue to use a 500 year old technology like the newspaper as a metaphor for websites?

The very term 'email' tells you the metaphor it was based on, but we don't format our emails to fit within a certain envelope size and we don't leave space in them for a stamp. The metaphor is useful to a point in conveying purpose, but that's where it ends. Websites often use columns in layout, have banners and contain text, but at that point any comparison to the printed page should end. Websites are not e-newspapers. They are a dynamic and customizable by the end-user and we need to stop thinking about them in terms of the printed page.

One of the more prevalent hold-overs from print is the concept of "the fold." Our own wireframes contain a marker displaying the estimated 1024x768 scroll line. Regardless of what you call it, I'm not entirely sure the concept is useful and it may, in fact, be harmful.

At least occasionally, most people resize their browser window to allow for multi-tasking (whether it be making your chat buddy list, itunes or another browser window visible). 1024x768 is hardly the only resolution around, and even if it were -- that still doesn't mean people are surfing full screen. Or with the same browser, browser interface settings, text-size preferences, etc. So obviously, if you were forced to pick any one pixel to represent the scroll line, at best you would be lucky for this line to represent 10% of your users. Even using a large "fold" zone around the estimated 1024x768 scroll line would, at best, represent less than half of users. And this is to say nothing of the fact that wireframes are not to scale and only represent the layout of information -- not its design.

Assuming you are comfortable with the fold not being a distinct line but instead being a range of possible values, that still leaves the question open about whether the concept is useful to begin with. As Matt pointed out, users scroll. Research shows they scroll all over the place and that page height has little effect on how often users scroll to the very bottom of a page. Items placed well below the fold line are often used just as (if not more) frequently than items above the fold. Intuitively it seems likely that items that are immediately viewable will get more attention from users, but the research just doesn't support this. Research also shows that users are not bothered by (and in fact, may prefer) right-side navigation... but we still rarely see it used. Pre-conceptions take a while to dissipate.

I said the fold may be a harmful concept. In theory it is somewhat useful in that branding and navigation should certainly be immediately evident when entering a page. In practice, however, its often used as a concrete dividing line between important content and useless content. Clients will try cramming as much content as possible above that imaginary line. Department A may feel slighted if Department B gets their content above the line but they don't. It seems to me this would detract from far more useful discussions about the structuring of information and design. Shouldn't we be leaning towards more white-space and more separation between elements, not boxing ourselves into a tiny box only 700px high?

Feel free to leave comments here or on Matt's post. Even within our own team we don't completely agree, so we're more than open to new perspectives on this issue.

See the following for more information:
ClickTale: Unfolding the Fold (research on scrolling)
w3schools browsers stats (resolution stats)
Web Page Layout: A Comparison Between Left- and Right-justified Site Navigation Menus