Another comment the end of your pages have have exactly what you mention, it looks like the page ends due to a large white-space before your footer content.
see:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=33258k8&s=4
I only realised there was even a footer section recently as my scroll wheel happens to stop in the perfect position for it to look like the content has finished. Bear in mind most people use scroll wheel now and don’t look at the scroll bar anymore.
Very patronizing attitude to users; It wasn’t that they didn’t know how to scroll, it’s that users couldn’t be bothered to scroll, unless the article had grabbed their attention above the fold.
I’m sorry, Jeff, but your argument against Neilsen is a straw-man.
He very clearly said that “users don’t scroll”, and that with time they “started to scroll”. His point was about their observed behavior, not their skill, knowledge, or motivation.
You attempt to debunk his point by arguing that web users “know how to scroll” and “knew how to scroll, even back then.”
Both positions can and do coexist. I don’t always do everything I know how to do.
I also think you’re misunderstanding Jacob Neilsen point. You seem to be interpreting the idea of an inverted pyramid as “cram in as much content in as possible above that fold”. What it should mean is to put the most important points at the start.
Which, strangely enough is exactly the point you make (at the bottom of the article). “It’s not only a basic rule of writing, it’s also a basic rule of the web: put the most important content at as close to the top of the page as you can.”
I wonder how many readers will get that far.
Friday at Jeff Parlor. Pointless article after a long pointless article. Then strawman right smack in the middle.
Dude, are you trying to waste user’s time? I have to scroll to read something decent on this blog.
The web browser is used to deliver more than just content, and the application you are developing matters when trying to decide how much your users should scroll.
I still believe that placing page content above the fold is essential in some applications. As an author of custom business web software, I am constantly developing applications where users navigate to many different areas of a familiar site, edit items, etc. If each of my pages required users to scroll vertically through many pages to find the info they want, or to enter text, and scroll before clicking “save,” it would affect the usability and efficiency of an application that they will use on a daily basis.
The users ignoring the scrollable part of a webpage is not always due to them not knowing that they actually can scroll, or even don’t know how to scroll. You’re right, anybody knows how to scroll nowadays, if not a decade ago at least.
I think the problem is even when the users knows they can scroll, they still can forget or ignore there is more webpage. The crollbar is not something every user watches in every page they visit, they can give a quick look at the page, don’t find what they’re looking for, ang go away without scrolling.
As you said, the webpage should give a hint that there’s more interesting content below the fold.
Part of the issue with the fold is how people get to the page. If you land on the page from Google looking for toasted bagel recipes the first thing you should seen, front and centre, is the toasted bagel article.
All too often the actual content of the page is pushed down by half a screens worth of banner, links and ads and squeezed in on either side by column of menus to other writers, sections, articles.
I have seen sites where the article itself was a single newspaper style column (an inch and a half wide), pressed to the left that was incapable of presenting more than two paragraphs from the article. This is a direct consequence of stuffing everything above the fold to the detriment of why the users have come to the page in the first place.
I think the important thing here is the psychological element. It’s not the users don’t know how to scroll or will stop because of something like a horizontal break in the wrong place or in-page scroll bar. The big thing is that you need content at the top the makes the user want to scroll. If your ‘above the fold’ area consists almost entirely of a large banner (a la Mr Spolsky’s recent fogcreek.com redesign) with no discernable real content to pull the user’s interest, they’ll just move along and never bother. You need to use featured area above the fold to give user a reason to stay interested.
I agree with the comment that the fold issue matters more when we’re on laptops where we often don’t have a scroll wheel mouse. Further, displays are moving to wide-screen where there’s less vertical space seen initially. And the scroll bars are further off to the side where they are less visible and can be more painful to use on a laptop/netbook.
What’s up with the date on this article? It certainly wasn’t posted before DevDays London!
Yes, the fold still matters. Just the other day, I surfed a web page. Read the content, then left. A friend asks me, did you see the “bla bla” on that page? I didn’t know what he was talking about. I went back to the page and then I realised what happened. I didn’t read the whole page, just what was above the fold.
Now, I do know how to scroll, but I just didn’t realise it was possible. The page just look like it fit nicely in the window. I didn’t look at the scrollbar, the content was all I was interested in.
So, basically what you say in the second part is very valid, especially the 3 guidlines.
Sort of like how I normally surf with NoScript on - I can turn Javascript on whenever I like, but I need a reason. If you provide me with a reason I can immediately see, I can turn on scripts, or scroll, or click on promising links, or whatever. If not, I’m off, and will never see what fancy thing you had using Javascript, or below the fold, or whatever.
Great comments Jeff. I was just discussing a webpage with someone a few days ago and 30% of the viewable page was taken up by header ‘fluff’ and the actual content was barely visible.
Perhaps a few practical suggestions for increasing the above-the-fold space on stackoverflow:
-for ‘Ask Question’ -> make the question “What’s your programming question? Be descriptive.” a watermark right in the ‘Title’ box?
-reduce the white space between the ‘search’ box and the ‘logo with buttons’ box? Maybe merge both into a bigger box that is smaller than the combination of them separate?
-for ‘Ask Question’ -> make the ‘How to Ask’ and ‘How to Format’ collapsable panels - once collapsed the other screen contents could expand horizontally and shrink vertically thus pulling more info onto the page.
The “scroll wheel” argument is fine for desktops, but not on on-the-go laptops (or worse, hand-helds). I find scrolling using the ubiquitous touch pad to be annoying and inconsistent, to the point where I’ll often end up reaching for the “PgDn” key – which has its own inconsistent behavior depending on focus, etc.!
If I’m going to a site to “sit down a read a while” I kind of expect to scroll. But if I’m chasing down a list of Google search hits looking to answer some specific question, scrolling is not likely.
“It’s not only a basic rule of writing, it’s also a basic rule of the web: put the most important content at as close to the top of the page as you can.”
But you also said not to cram the space above the fold.
So what happens if the amount of important content is requires it to be squeezed in before the fold ?
I don’t really see how the arguments against being aware of the fold are applicable in this case. Sure, if you’re designing a page that has content that people go there specifically to read, then if you have stuff below the fold they’ll probably be able to scroll down and read it.
However, if you’re talking about a form their filling out, or something similar, then they aren’t interested in what’s on the page beyond doing what they need to and submitting it. That drastically decreases the chances of them looking beyond the fold if it appears that everything they need is above it, so if you want something to be seen, put it above the fold.
There are two aspects to this issue: 1. is there such thing as ‘a fold’? 2. is that fold relevant?
Studies have shown that browser canvas heights (far more relevant than screen resolution) vary hugely. Chances are, if you have a popular site, almost every value between 0 and at least 1,000 will be represented. I’ve recorded such details for an internal page that’s only ever seen by about 5 people, and a single person 95% of the time. The smallest height recorded is 129 pixels, the largest 918. There are a total of 190 unique heights in between those values. Explanations for this have already been given in the article (chrome, etc.) but we also need to take into account CSS differences between browsers, whether javascript/css/images are enabled, what font-size the user is viewing the page at, etc. Multiply these factors by the varying canvas heights, and it should be pretty obvious that your estimate of where a user will see a given element is almost entirely inaccurate.
As to whether the fold is relevant (even if it did exist), consider the newspaper where the concept originated. Many newspapers are displayed such that you can only see what’s below the fold when you’ve purchased the paper; not so for a website. Even when you can bend down, pick up the paper, and flip it over, that’s a lot more effort than scrolling. As has been pointed out already, the scroll wheel increase ease of scrolling enormously.
Of course, the general advice is still valid that content should follow the inverse pyramid guideline, but any discussion about absolute vertical positions within the page is essentially meaningless.
More here:
I get so annoyed when people look at screen resolution when discussing web site design. Less than a third of my screen real-estate gets devoted to a single browser window. I’d like it to be a fourth. That’s more than enough space. Yet, so many websites design for bigger than what they need. I didn’t get more screen real-estate in order to dedicate it all to one app or one window.
My theory is that site owners and advertisers learned about this, started putting a lot of crap at the top of pages, so people learned and started scrolling past it.