There is a great misconception that people don’t read or view website content "below the fold,” or below about 600px, which is the average screen's initial cutoff point. This, however, is not so. The “fold,” in fact, is a print-publishing term used in the newspaper industry. Newspapers want to present important stories and visually appealing photographs “above the fold” of the front page; that is, on the upper half of the front page.
As we continue to explore and master the Web, we learn that things we did in print, business models and design concepts just don't — and shouldn't — apply to the Web.
Today’s Internet users have been trained to scroll down a Web page, especially in these days of blogs, where front pages often contain more than 10 posts. Web design trends are even moving from trying to fit everything you can “above the fold” to more of a buildup, giving users more useful and important information as they scroll down until they reach “the prize.”
On top of that, screen monitor sizes are varying more from user to user. Not everyone's fold is the same, so how are you supposed to design a layout based on a variable? The flexible, 100 percent table-width layouts tried to pull that off, and it did not work out very well.
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