Over the years we've had a few chats amongst the Solutions team about a number of topics that invoke a fairly solid, non-fence sitting reaction.

People continuing to use outdated technology such as Internet Explorer 6, Windows 2000, ASP Classic are a number of the obvious ones when it comes to the more technical side of things.

But there are also outdated concepts within the world of web design that invoke some good conversation around the office.
 

As technology evolves, so do it's users

When dealing with web design day to day certain concepts tend to pop up every now and then that we in the office have long ago accepted as outdated. Concepts that assume that general web users of today are still the same as those from a decade ago, concepts that unfortunately stifle creativity and the potential for some even better, fresher web design.

Unfortunately not everyone is up to speed when it comes to awareness of the latest trends or even how older ideas have evolved to fit better with today's webciety. A lot of these ideas are grounded in good advice, but should be approached moreso as guidelines than hard and fast rules. Don't allow these so-called rules to distract from the task at hand: making a great website work for you, your organisation and your community.
 

Above the Fold

One of the outdated concepts we hear about often is the idea of "above the fold".

"Above the fold” is a graphic design term that refers to the location of important items on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper or any other type of printed thing that folds.
 

...which has often turned out to mean...

 ...the digital fold concept evolved into ‘squash as much content as you can above a certain number of pixels’.
 

The more 'guideline' approach to this idea is ensuring content within the top area of your pages encourages clicking and scrolling through to further content by way of visual cues and, quite simply, compelling content.

Once again coming back to the often heard idea of "content is king". It is!
 

A little bit of testing

On a related note, we've done some usability testing around the office. For us at Solcot, equipped with standard modern mice with scroll wheels, we found we were all more comfortable and more likely to scroll down as opposed to clicking an element to find out more. We are not everyone, of course, but would be representative of an increasing amount of net savvy web users.
 

Further reading

Below are a few articles and opinions on the topic of "above the fold". Take a look, they may change your concept of how a website should be constructed.

The third article below, by Paddy Donnelly, gives a great example of a good approach to front-page content, the much-admired 37signals website.

• http://cmdshiftdesign.com/blog/2009/09/24/staying-above-the-fold-in-web-design/
• http://www.viget.com/inspire/evolving-design-standards-the-fold/
• http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/
  
  

Happy designing! :)