Do you still design websites with a "fold" in mind? How do you cater for non-standard screen sizes like mobile and tablet devices? Do you build a fold into mobile sites?

I'm interested to see how "fold" design is changing with a large number of different screen sizes and devices people use.

For me, I don't think it is relevant anymore. If you provide great content and gets people interested, people will scroll beyond the fold.

Here's a nice demonstration.
iampaddy.com

With scroll wheel, trackpad, touch screen. It isn't hard to just go down the page for content, I believe people would think scrolling beyond the fold is actually necessary now to create the illusion of added value.

Getting the fold to work on screen sizes isn't hard (with the improvement of CSS and browser support), but it takes a massive effort to ensure all sizes are supported the way you want it and there is no guarantee in future proofing it.

Having said that, its always a case by case. It always depend on what your are trying to achieve.

I saw a conversation on Twitter yesterday that someone did user experience testing on several websites and found that some of the older demographics don't even know scrolling is a thing, so I wouldn't be ignoring the fold completely..

twitter.com

Any facts and figures to go with that claim? Obviously, the computer illiterate wouldn't know half the things that were possible, but what percentage of people are still illiterate?

It would be pretty difficult for the BBC to fit in an entire news article in top top 600px of a page... And even if it did, the older audience would have difficulty reading the small font...

Thanks for the tip on the study :)

I think it also depends on what's shown on the illiterate's screen when they open the site. A news article obviously doesn't end mid-sentence, but if there's no obvious end (let's say all the somewhat important content shows above the fold), they might not think to scroll.

Maybe it's good for websites that are geared towards older/illiterate demographics to put a button at the bottom that says "there's more", similar to the "scroll to top" button, to make it more obvious there's a fold..

On screen navigation would help but its a very difficult task to design for people who don't know how to use it. Perhaps another medium would better suit as a communication tool? Then again, this itself is a challenge, one that I have not yet experienced.

I think this itself is an interesting question, anyone with experience (or studies) on how the illiterate or older generation use tech?

One site I know that utilised 'fold' differently is fastcodesign.com Too bad no mobile site.

I might be looking at the question too literally, but I absolutely think the fold matters.

If the content at the top of the page doesn't grab the user's attention, the user is gone.

Whether you need them to scroll down, or to click a link, or to take some other action, you've got to hook them on that initially-viewable portion of the page.

Thanks, Niraj, for adding me to this branch - this is my first time to make a post and it's good to give this site a try.