How to Fold a Computer Screen
August 19, 2010 | No Comments
{ do not fold here }
It’s tricky, but with fresh elbow grease and the right angles, you can fold your screen into a glowing, video-emanating swan. Also true: you shouldn’t believe everything you read online. You can’t really crease your way to that dream swan, of course.
Not yet, anyway. “The fold” however, is a bona fide concept borrowed from a magical era, when news from the day before was printed on paper, then thrown at your house before sun-up by kids on bikes. Strange, wonderful days, those were. The term referred, unmistakably, to the fold in the newspaper. Essentially, you’d want to make sure that your #1-important-don’t-miss material was above the fold line in the front page layout. Anything below the fold was akin to the wrestler in the black trunks: he was at the main event, but all eyes fell elsewhere, on the glittery <cough> “macho” fellow in brighter tights (and at the top of the bill).
The term has been copied and pasted into web design to mark the point at which the initial on-screen experience ends for users: the point at which they’ll have to scroll. Muddling matters is that there are umpteen different display sizes and screen resolutions out there: the content creator doesn’t have full control over how the content is viewed. And there isn’t just one magic fold line, there are numerous possible folds, and the stats on those fold lines are dynamic, changing as time passes, as new screens (and devices) are introduced, and old ones are sent to pasture.
There’s plenty of debate and study as to how much viewer drop-off there is below the “safe zone”, but it’s safe to say that you don’t want absolutely must-see content or navigation below the fold, as it were. Which fold-line standard you set as your cut-off is a matter of judgement, preference, and knowing your audience.
So, before we run below yet another fold line, here are two links to help you determine where these invisible boundaries lie:
http://whereisthefold.com/ – We love the clean and simple execution of this one.
http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ – Here’s Google’s take. It adds the horizontal aspect, but it looks like some kid’s first science fair graph.
In creasing,
- BZ