What is Digg?108 Comments
- 10001110101, on 10/10/2007, -1/+75Here I thought it was an article about Sunday's rerun of MythBusters.
Seriously, digg itself is a good example: I was stunned the first time I ran into the "Show 51 - 75 of ### discussions" link.. I had become so used to scrolling to the bottom and skimming the comments that this abrupt stoppage confused the hell out of me. - Easty, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26Horizontally, on the other hand, stands no ***** chance.
- arbulus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+19I dispise the "Show 51 - 75 of ### discussions" link. It should show all comments automatically.
Beside that, half the time the damed thing doesn't work. I click it and it either does nothing or it only shows one more comment. - Flipperbw, on 10/10/2007, -4/+19I don't think Snowman understands the comment system.
- MacEnvy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15There is a certain truth to the fact that if you don't make the stuff "above the fold" interesting, many people won't scroll down for more. And I must say I rarely click to get the next 50 comments in digg ... it's too bad, because I'm probably missing out on some good stuff.
But my point is, to a certain extent, the idea that people won't scroll down for more may be true in general. - gmiley, on 10/10/2007, -3/+18Considering your inability to click "Reply", I would hazard a guess that neither do you...
- SkippyDoorknob, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14Requiring horizontal scroll is the second fastest way to get me to leave a website.
The first is playing music in the background. - DivisibleByZero, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13It's also annoying when they assume where "the fold" is. Not everyone uses the same resolution.
- Piggycow, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14Sadly I first thought of mythbusters as well
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11For my own clarity, could somebody explain to me what "the fold" or "the jump" is? I often come across phrases such as "explanation after the jump", yet never see something to consider a "jump".. or anything for that matter.
- dkay, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11FTA:
The Above-the-Fold Myth
We are all well aware that web design is not an easy task. There are many variables to consider, some of them technical, some of them human. The technical considerations of designing for the web can (and do) change quite regularly, but the human variables change at a slower rate. Sometimes the human variables change at such a slow rate that we have a hard time believing that it happens.
This is happening right now in web design. There is an astonishing amount of disbelief that the users of web pages have learned to scroll and that they do so regularly. Holding on to this disbelief – this myth that users won’t scroll to see anything below the fold – is doing everyone a great disservice, most of all our users.
First, a definition: The word “fold” means a great many things, even within the discipline of design. The most common use of the term “fold” is perhaps used in reference to newspaper layout. Because of the physical dimensions of the printed page of a broadsheet newspaper, it is folded. The first page of a newspaper is where the “big” stories of the issue are because it is the best possible placement. Readers have to flip the paper over (or unfold it) to see what else is in the issue, therefore there is a chance that someone will miss it. In web design, the term “fold” means the line beyond which a user must scroll to see more contents of a page (if it exists) after the page displays within their browser. It is also referred to as a “scroll-line.”
Screen performance data and new research indicate that users will scroll to find information and items below the fold. There are established design best practices to ensure that users recognize when a fold exists and that content extends below it1. Yet during requirements gathering for design projects designers are inundated with requests to cram as much information above the fold as possible, which complicates the information design. Why does the myth continue, when we have documented evidence that the fold really doesn’t matter in certain contexts?
Once upon a time, page-level vertical scrolling was not permitted on AOL. Articles, lists and other content that would have to scroll were presented in scrolling text fields or list boxes, which our users easily used. Our pages, which used proprietary technology, were designed to fit inside a client application, and the strictest of guidelines ensured that the application desktop itself did not scroll. The content pages floated in the center of the application interface and were too far removed from the scrollbar location for users to notice if a scrollbar appeared. Even if the page appeared to be cut off, as current best practices dictate, it proved to be such an unusual experience to our users that they assumed that the application was “broken.” We had to instill incredible discipline in all areas of the organization that produced these pages – content creation, design and development – to make sure our content fit on these little pages.
As AOL moved away from our proprietary screen technology to an open web experience, we enjoyed the luxury of designing longer (and wider) pages. Remaining sensitive to the issues of scrolling from our history, we developed and employed practices for designing around folds:
* We chose as target screen resolutions those used by the majority of our users.
* We identified where the fold would fall in different browsers, and noted the range of pixels that would be in the fold “zone.”
* We made sure that images and text appeared “broken” or cut off at the fold for the majority of our users (based on common screen resolutions and browsers).
* We kept the overall page height to no more than 3 screens.
But even given our new larger page sizes, we were still presented with long lists of items to be placed above the fold – lists impossible to accommodate. There were just too many things for the limited amount of vertical space.
For example, for advertising to be considered valuable and saleable, a certain percentage of it must appear above the 1024×768 fold. Branding must be above the fold. Navigation must be above the fold – or at least the beginning of the list of navigational choices. (If the list is well organized and displayed appropriately, scanning the list should help bring users down the page.) Big content (the primary content of the site) should begin above the fold. Some marketing folks believe that the actual number of data points and links above the fold is a strategic differentiator critical to business success. Considering the limited vertical real estate available and the desire for multiple ad units and functionality described above, an open design becomes impossible.
And why? Because people think users don’t scroll. Jakob Nielsen wrote about the growing acceptance and understanding of scrolling in 19972^, yet 10 years later we are still hearing that users don’t scroll.
Research debunking this myth is starting to pop up, and a great example of this is the report available on ClickTale.com3^. In it, the researchers used their proprietary tracking software to measure the activity of 120,000 pages. Their research gives data on the vertical height of the page and the point to which a user scrolls. In the study, they found that 76% of users scrolled and that a good portion of them scrolled all the way to the bottom, despite the height of the screen. Even the longest of web pages were scrolled to the bottom. One thing the study does not capture is how much time is spent at the bottom of the page, so the argument can be made that users might just scan it and not pay much attention to any content placed there.
This is where things get interesting.
I took a look at performance data for some AOL sites and found that items at the bottom of pages are being widely used. Perhaps the best example of this is the popular celebrity gossip website TMZ.com. The most clicked on item on the TMZ homepage is the link at the very bottom of the page that takes users to the next page. Note that the TMZ homepage is often over 15000 pixels long – which supports the ClickTale research that scrolling behavior is independent of screen height. Users are so engaged in the content of this site that they are following it down the page until they get to the “next page” link.
Maybe it’s not fair to use a celebrity gossip site as an example. After all, we’re not all designing around such tantalizing guilty-pleasure content as the downfall of beautiful people. So, let’s look at some drier content.
For example, take AOL News Daily Pulse. You’ll notice the poll at the bottom of the page – the vote counts are well over 300,000 each. This means that not only did folks scroll over 2000 pixels to the bottom of the page, they actually took the time to answer a poll while they were there. Hundreds of thousands of people taking a poll at the bottom of a page can easily be called a success.
But, you may argue, these pages are both in blog format. Perhaps blogs encourage scrolling more than other types of pages. I’m not convinced, since blog format is of the “newest content on top” variety, but it may be true. However, looking at pages that are not in blog format, we see the same trend. On the AOL Money & Finance homepage, users find and use the modules for recent quotes and their personalized portfolios even when these modules are placed well beneath the 1024×768 fold.
Another example within AOL Money & Finance is a photo gallery entitled Top Tax Tips. Despite the fact that the gallery is almost 2500 pixels down the page, this gallery generates between 200,000 and 400,000 page views depending on promotion of the Taxes page.
It is clear that where a given item falls in relation to the fold is becoming less important. Users are scrolling to see what they want, and finding it. The key is the content – if it is compelling, users will follow where it leads.
When does the fold matter?
The most basic rule of thumb is that for every site the user should be able to understand what your site is about by the information presented to them above the fold. If they have to scroll to even discover what the site is, its success is unlikely.
Functionality that is essential to business strategy should remain (or at least begin) above the fold. For example, if your business success is dependent on users finding a particular thing (movie theaters, for example) then the widget to allow that action should certainly be above the fold.
Screen height and folds matter for applications, especially rapid-fire applications where users input variables and change the display of information. The input and output should be in very close proximity. Getting stock quotes is an example: a user may want to get four or five quotes in sequence, so it is imperative that the input field and the basic quote information display remain above the fold for each symbol entered. Imagine the frustration at having to scroll to find the input field for each quote you wanted.
Where IS the fold?
Here is perhaps the biggest problem of all. The design method of cutting-off images or text only works if you know where the fold is. There is a lot of information out there about how dispersed the location of fold line actually is. Again, a very clear picture of this problem is shown on ClickTale. In the same study of page scrolling, fold locations of viewed screens were captured, based on screen resolution and browser used. It’s a sad, sad thing, but the single highest concentration of fold location (at around 600 pixels) for users accounted for less than 10% of the distribution. This pixel-height corresponds with a screen resolution of 1024×768. Browser applications take away varying amounts of vertical real estate for their interfaces (toolbars, address fields, etc). Each browser has a slightly different size, so not all visitors running a resolution of 1024×768 will have a fold that appears in the same spot. In the ClickTale study, the three highest fold locations were 570, 590 and 600 pixels – apparently from different browsers running on 1024×768 screens. But the overall distribution of fold locations for the entire study was so varied that even these three sizes together only account for less than 26% of visits. What does all this mean? If you pick one pixel location on which to base the location of the fold when designing your screens, the best-case scenario is that you’ll get the fold line exactly right for only 10% of your visitors.
So what do we do now?
Stop worrying about the fold. Don’t throw your best practices out the window, but stop cramming stuff above a certain pixel point. You’re not helping anyone. Open up your designs and give your users some visual breathing room. If your content is compelling enough your users will read it to the end.
Advertisers currently want their ads above the fold, and it will be a while before that tide turns. But it’s very clear that the rest of the page can be just as valuable – perhaps more valuable – to contextual advertising. Personally, I’d want my ad to be right at the bottom of the TMZ page, forget the top.
The biggest lesson to be learned here is that if you use visual cues (such as cut-off images and text) and compelling content, users will scroll to see all of it. The next great frontier in web page design has to be bottom of the page. You’ve done your job and the user scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page because they were so engaged with your content. Now what? Is a footer really all we can offer them? If we know we’ve got them there, why not give them something to do next? Something contextual, a natural next step in your site, or something with which to interact (such as a poll) would be welcome and, most importantly, used.
References
1 Jared Spool’s UIE Brain Sparks, August 2, 2006:
Utilizing the Cut-off Look to Encourage Users To Scroll
2 Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, December 1, 1997:
Changes in Web Usability Since 1994
3 ClickTale’s Research Blog, December 23, 2006: Unfolding the Fold - jhnewt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9I'm not going to read that all. It's too long and requires too much scrolling.
- fadetoone, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Hell, I didn't even know there was a next 50 comments link...
- AuroraAlpha, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9Blasting the Myth of the Working Server
- dkay, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9Good detailed article.
If you haven't mastered scrolling yet, you aren't getting anything useful on the web. Imagine only seeing the first 1024 pixels of a Google search... that's crippling. - devboy00, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10It's dead Jim
- hamishmacdonald, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6The original site is down, but as someone who writes copy for a living for an audience of busy entrepreneurs, let me assure you that people *do* skim like crazy, and I'm constantly having to remind myself to pare back my prose, and state my entire point at the very beginning (which, as someone who also writes novels, I find painful to do, giving away the ending first).
Sites like Digg are the exception, I believe, because we actually get as much or more out of the banter back and forth as from the original article.
One habit I find in my online reading -- and I don't know if anyone else shares this -- is that I'll read to *almost the end* of a piece, then drift away. I'm not sure what that's about, since I'm usually so close to finishing.
I like to remind myself of something a marketing guru named Joe Polish says: "You can never be too long, just too boring." - MtDewaholic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6I refuse to scroll horizontally. I hate websites that think I am going to expand my browser to take up the entire width of my screen.
- arbulus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5It a term that is taken from newspapers.
When you see a newspaper lying on a rack, it's folded so you only see the top half of the front page. Stories that are lower on the page, or "below the fold" are considered less important because you won't see them unless you pick up the paper and unfold it. How this relates to a website: when you first visit a page, anything that doesn't display on your screen without you having to scroll down is considered "below the fold".
When a story starts on page one and then says "Continued Page A4", the place where it continues on A4 is called the "jump" because the story has jumped to another page. How this relates to the web: a link at the bottom of a story that says "Continued on Page 2" that you have to click to see the rest of the story. - bradleyland, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5You know why this BS is still floating around:
* Good advice starts with the experts. The guys in the trenches. They know what works, but they don't always get to make the decisions.
* The decision makers will eventually hear a piece of advice enough times for it to stick in their brain, and then it becomes design dogma. They don't care if it's true, they only care that they're right, or that they appear to know what they're talking about.
I'm still approached on a regular basis about stupid SEO stuff like keyword stuffing using white on white text. As if this is some pioneering technique that no one, in all the years of the existence of the web, has thought of yet.
It always baffles me that companies will hire smart people, only to ignore them. You want to know why companies like Google are a success? Because they were started by smart people who know how to trust other smart people. - SkippyDoorknob, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5It's even worse when a site resizes your browser window for you.
(yes, I'm aware that there are settngs and things to prevent that, but the fact that they even try in the first place is bad). - eatsushi, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6The biggest problems are those dinosaur thinking creative directors who are too big headed to realize what users want, typically in the ad industry. The only folds that are a problem in my opinion are the ones that hang over your belt.
- rusty0101, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4What? You're not using the 'I'm feeling lucky' button?
- mapkinase, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I wish there is a way to know if the digg story is already marked by this mark of doom. "Show 51 - 75 of ### discussions" means that whatever you write in main comments after this point will be buried in the oblivion.
- Homunculiheaded, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4There's a huge demographics gap in what this author is talking about. I've taken some course work on accessibility (not just for websites ) and something which I found very interesting was that low literacy readers CAN'T SKIM text. That means scrolling is very difficult for anyone that has low literacy, because they have to either literary re-read everything, or find some way to hold thheir place. Now you may be thinking "come on how many people are low-literacy", but this can actually be a fairly large number of people depending on your audience. If you're designing for accessibility, the fold is very important.
- f4nt0m4s, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4pictures of naked women have shown me the way of scrolling
we need more porn seminars - MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Even before the change, the further down your comment was on a page, the less chance it would have to be read.
Now that comments are split up, no one reads them.
The other annoyance is when you dig someone down, you cannot go back and read their comment, which sometimes is very annoying.
And while I am still complaining, I think there should be an undo dig/bury feature because sometimes I slip and I mistakenly bury someone who I agree with and dig someone who I disagree. - DivisibleByZero, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5From context of this article, I gather that "the fold" is the bottom of your screen. The point where you have to scroll down to continue reading.
"The Jump" goes back to newspapers, when you see front page story with "continued on page B7" at the bottom. Nobody bothers to actually go to B7 and finish reading.
For the web, a more appropriate analogy would be to actually read stories on Digg instead of just their description, or when some blogs (slashdot for example) have a "read more" button at the bottom of long posts. Can also refer to sites that have ads embedded in the middle of the article.
But I've seen a lot of sites where it doesn't make sense. Maybe their RSS feed truncates at that point? Or maybe those bloggers just don't know what the term means. - dajuggernaut, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3apparently you cant fold a server more than once
- NineSpoons, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3http://duggmirror.com/design/Blasting_the_Myth_of_the_Fold/
- Roedran, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3There is no myth. It's a fact. I get input all the time from users of my company's sites to our salespeople. If it isn't in the top 1/3rd of the page/within a single twitch of the mouse wheel down, it isn't read or used. Our click throughs and heat maps bear this out, and the non-use of excellent materials by our staffers that are below the fold also proves this. I think it's pretty amazing that professionals can get away with saying "I refuse to scroll so redo your site and all content" -- all the while being babies and not using their scroll wheels. They say they don't have time. Exceptionally short-sighted and lazy, but that's life down in the Web dev. salt mines.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Self-pwned FTW!!
- theholycow, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Not half as taxing as digg is on my browser. No matter which browser I use, digg brings it to a screeching halt. Any other news site, I can open 50 tabs of stories in two minutes. Digg takes two minutes per tab and freezes the browser while it waits. This is true of various versions of Firefox and Opera running on 3 computers running Slackware, Ubuntu, and XP. One is on cable, one is on fiber, and one is a laptop that's on whatever the nearest wifi is.
Am I the only one with this problem? - Kinsbane, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I agree on the principle of the fold, but I'm really tired of reading a blog that tells me to, "hit the jump".
- omelette, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I don't know if my tendencies are completely odd or what but I am far more likely to follow a link or click an ad at the end of a page. When I arrive at a page, I usually arrive with purpose (ie. read an article) but when I've reached the articles conclusion I may forget what initially led me there or what I was doing before I arrived and in that moment I am most susceptible to advertisements and/or random headline links.
- gavintlgold, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I believe it is to save digg bandwidth. Imagine how taxing we are to their servers already!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Or sadistic?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2You're not.
- dafragsta, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3OMFG. Yeah, and saying that no one reads the part of the paper that's below the fold is doing everyone a great disservice as well.
I challenge whoever wrote this BS to take a look at a heat map or the click rate of items below the fold. It's not about if a user does or doesn't scroll. It's about that valuable space that represents the very first thing a user sees when the page loads. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Why do they use AOL as an example on an article to do with web designing?
- cloudyprison, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Not with the way so many people commit top post reply suckling. (Off Topic Replies to keep their comments on top.)
- RetroRufio, on 10/10/2007, -2/+417" screen @ 1280 x 1024
Didn't have to scroll - sylox, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Ever since i got a mouse with the scroll wheel(about a bajillion years ago) vertical scrolling was no problem to me. When i scroll i don't even realize im scrolling. Its just a natural thing now. Horizontal scrolling however is the most evil thing in the world.
- arbulus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2you're definitely not the only one.
firefox goes ***** on digg threads. i constantly have to deal with the whole thing halting and getting boxes asking me to stop scripts. - mapkinase, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2It needs jumps. Like "jump outahere".
- MacParrot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I would have commented, but it was under the fold
- angusm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Indeed. There's nothing as frustrating as going to a Digg comment page and using the browser's search-in-page command to see how many Diggs your latest glowing gem of wisdom has received ... and finding that it's not on the first page because it's buried somewhere below"Show 351-400 of #### discussions".
Or so I've heard. Not that I'd ever do anything like that. Waste hours obsessively looking at past comment threads to see how many people have dugg me down? Never happen. - geuisteses, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I didn't read anything that was written after the end of the screen. Too lazy to roll the scroll wheel on my mouse
- TheLD, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Mirror: http://www.dotcache.com/http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of
- AnonymousFan9, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I wanted to read your comment but you didn't get to the point quick enough
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