Knowing when to fold

I'm not addicted to the idea of the fold. I begrudge it immensely and consider it stifling and counter-intuitive that we should still try and design websites so that all of our content falls within the first few hundred pixels.

I recently came to the end of a big project for a client, dealing with multiple issues with their archaic CMS and for the most part hacking styles in so it would render correctly in both their editor and live on the web. As I thought all of the issues had been resolved, I was asked if I could make sure the homepage cleared the fold. Of course, you consider the fold at the design stage, but then generally throw it out to other concerns, like functionality and actually just getting the job done. I do admit that some of the spacing had dropped down within this CMS' reckless regard for rules, but as far as I was concerned it worked, was nicely spaced and did the job. Once I'd compensated for excess spacing, the actual element that dropped below our mythical 578 pixel boundary was the bottom of a button. You could see the button, you could read it. The bottom of the text merely dipped below the bottom of the browser status bar on a 1024x768 screen resolution.

Explaining my own personal take on this - the button is visible, you can click it, you know its there, you know how to scroll, the fold is a myth etc. didn't seem to help when dealing with people whose study of the internet included a large chapter entitled "The Fold, and why you should avoid it".

Original Designs out the window at the end of the build, I had to close up all of my lovely padding to accommodate the fold. Do I approve? No.

A quick Google uncovers many like-minded individuals and organisations - AOL, conscious of the issue designed all their pages to intentionally cut off images or text for the majority of screen resolutions (http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of), and I had another article which I've completely lost, but I got through Elliot Jay Stocks' twitter feed (www.twitter.com/elliotjaystocks) that touted a more design-centric view to encouraging scrolling (as if we need to!)

It is with great sadness that I now have to turn my attention to my company's own website to investigate how the fold works. Tangible is the company and we're an advertising agency that, among other things, do digital. We make websites. That being the case, it was odd that another agency within our group designed it, and it was peculiar that the website wasn't at least passed under my nose before it was due to go live. This we forgive. The website is currently live at http://www.tangible.uk.com (no, I'm not sure about .uk.com either, but it is a real domain extension, I promise). The problem you'll see if you're on a laptop, and one with a smaller screen than I, is that the website seems entirely to consist of one large case study. At certain resolutions there is a line at the bottom of the page with a nicely fading out gradient. This appears as the end of the design - compounded by the fact it's the physical end of your screen. This issue continues on another couple of pages; should you click the case study, you'll find another page which contains one large image. We're not being feeble-minded if we say "How was I to know to scroll?", because although it's our instinct to scroll on a webpage, when we're given an indication that the page has ended, why would we? With this as the fact, I now have a redesign on my hands. Will you want to scroll? Will you need to? I'll keep you posted.