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I've heard more recently that users prefer a limited amount of scrolling over the need to click and download a new page, over and over. I even saw one survey (which I can't locate right now) that strongly indicated this preference.
What do people here think? Is the above-the-fold model still a good idea?
As long as the person doesn't have to scroll endlessly and the most important info can easily be seen its OK.
Actually about the length of "posting a message box page" is just about right - much more and you lose track of where you are on the page.
Also, I believe the mouse scroll wheel has made a big impact on this issue.
Maybe it shows a growing maturity of web users. Maybe with all the demos on TV ect, people have come to understand that you CAN use that little down arrow on the right bottom.
If the designer is just lazy and makes everything vertical then I get annoyed at having to scroll.
When long scrolls are designed in, it's nice to have a series of links at the top to pertinent information below, as well as a "go to top" button to avoid scrolling.
I saw a beautiful javascripted "go to top" button that floats along with the scrolled page. I'm going to borrow it..........
www.cognicase.com
We operate sites that sell stuff, we present the products in a similar manner to the SE's, ten to a page and you have to scroll and click next ten etc to view them all. However when they click the more info button [the page with the buy button] the whole product has to "fit" on a 800x600 screen including the buy button. We accept a small scroll down to enable the product to be displayed in full, but the entire details including the buy button have to be visable at a point in a 800x600 display.
Horizontal Scrolling is VERY taboo. 800 x 600 is the max I design for. I apologize to the 14" monitor crowd.
I had one client who required me to expand the length of their product pages. The original design had limited scrolling - about 3 screens full - and a 60kb total page weight. They felt that their clients needed to have lots on one screen for easy comparison. And surveying the competition I saw that this was pretty common, though not universal by any means.
So I complied. Reluctantly, yes, but I really am here to serve the client and I had already spelled out the potential downside for them. So we went to 6 to 8 screens full per page -- total page weights were in the stratosphere, as far as I was concerned (nearly 200kb).
In this case, there's a "Buy" button next to every offering, now with as many as 33 products per page, including images. Guess what? Their sales went up significantly -- they were right, at least for their crafts-related field.
From my own point of view as a user, I much prefer scrolling to playing download roulette with click after click. But if a client wants it all above the fold, we'll give that a try too -- and MEASURE the results. However, it's been a year since I had a client who thought that "above the fold" was a good idea.
Huge! Do we have any idea how many people have scrolly-mice though? What about MAC users? UNIX etc?
I hope this does not come across as pedantic, maybe just a broader reminder to me to keep an open mind..
Another is a kind of "explore the room" feeling. We did one prototype of this for an art gallery, and it seemed very user friendly, even enhancing the experience and making it more like a physical visit to a gallery. This still may be put into production. It's the precise antithesis of "everything above the fold".
From the general tone of this conversation, I'm assuming our consensus is that "above the fold" is an idea whose time has passed.
I never really liked it, and I hope no one else asks for it. It's like a set of flashcards, with very little freedom to communicate -- which is what the web should be about. Just one more example of importing the print mind-set into a web setting, IMO.
I've read 100's of posts/articles over the years from people that felt sure you needed everything above the fold. Personally I've never agreed with this. I guarantee there is not, and never has been, a user out there that used windows and didn't know about their scroll bar. :-) The concept is just funny.
As far as the idea that users won't, or don't like, to scroll... I have never found this to be true unless you're talking about more than 4 or 5 pages at 800x600.
If anyone out there is still trying to force everything above the fold by using multiple pages... Here's a stat for ya... You won't get more than 3 clicks out of the average user (I've heard this from multiple surveys/tracking services). I've found from my own experience that a significant percentage of users only stick around for 2 clicks.
Case closed :-)
But just in case... keep in mind that even if your sub pages use the same images (and are therefore catched) every object is still going to require a seperate connection request on the first load. At 56k this takes a lot of time with most sites.
About 200k pages... That's over 30 seconds of load time on a dial up connection (closer to 40 seconds if there are a lot of images). I suppose, though, that it makes a difference if it's sub product pages that the user requests instead of the front page.
My rule is usually to keep load times under 10 seconds at 56k unless it's a page I know is only being visited by users that really really want the info :-)
The change from 1994 is that scrolling is no longer a usability disaster for navigation pages. Scrolling still reduces usability, but all design involves trade-offs, and the argument against scrolling is no longer as strong as it used to be. Thus, pages that can be markedly improved with a scrolling design may be made as long as necessary, though it should be a rare exception to go beyond three screenfulls on an average monitor.
[useit.com...]
You are lucky with MSNBS'c large fonts and ads and such to get more than 200 words of actual content on each page. That is why i avoid it like the page - even CNN is (moderately) better.
Many, and I would be so bold to say, most... designers still understandably, design with the permanantly-online user in mind, as they are most like themselves. They forget that a big proportion, especially internationally are on expensive dial up connections. We muct be one of the very few design people that design on dial up, hence undesrtandably, our designs tend to be optimised for dial up users. (Almost as bad I guess!)
So give me a long page any time that i can save with one click, rather than those "clickathon" articles with off line usability - nill...
