Screen Real Estate

ATF - Above the Fold

[pageoneresults]

One of the new features in FrontPage 2003 is the ability to preview pages at different screen resolutions.

FrontPage 2003 takes into account the screen space used by menus, toolbars, and scrollbars when displaying the page at your chosen page size.

One of the things that always interested me working with CSS and Absolute Positioning is the amount of available Screen Real Estate I have Above the Fold.

Well, here are the numbers based on the most popular screen resolutions...

• 640x480 - 600x300
  
• 800x600 - 760x420
  
• 832x624 - 795x470
  
• 1024x768 - 955x600

The above numbers take into account all other elements that intrude into available Screen Real Estate when Above the Fold.

Using FrontPage 2003 there are three simple steps involved in previewing your pages at the above screen resolutions.

Open Web Page > View > Page Size > Select Page Size

P.S. This feature was also available in FrontPage 2002 but was not as robust as the new version.

[pete_m]

Don't forget that the amount of available real estate will depend on many factors, including:
1 - The browser used
2 - Browser button size (for Back, Forward, Home, etc)
3 - The number of toolbars installed (e.g. Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo)
4 - Whether the window is maximised (not a given at 1024x768)

Another way of previewing different browser sizes is the excellent Web Developer Extension for Firefox [chrispederick.com].

[monkeythumpa]

I gave a report to my boss today about the way people use our site. For the homepage I found that only 5.8% of or clicks come from links below the fold for people with 800x600 resolutions.

[yowza]

Just thought I would mention that DW has had this ability for as long as I can remember. Warning - I can barely remember my name. :)

[ken_b]

Today I had the opportunity to watch as a first time visitor to my site perused and navigated the site pretty extensively.

What an eye opener that was.

I've always strived to get the critical stuff above the fold. Apparently I still need to work on that.

The point is, don't make assumptions about how a visitor will use the site based on things that we as designers have come to take for granted.

Sure we can check things like available ATF space with a few clicks of the mouse. That's more than worth doing, and I d o it all the time.

But the impact of those functions can be real negative on the useablity, and quite likely profitability, of a site if we aren't very carefull.