I think we've all heard the term "the fold." If you haven't 1) get with the times, and 2) forget that I even mentioned it because “ the fold" is on it's way O-U-T, out!

Back in the days where little Timmy would ride his bike around the neighborhood and throw a newspaper at your front door, scaring the jeepers out of old Fido, this was how you got your news. Big headlines were what caught peoples’ eye. And where did these big headlines appear? Right on the front page. More specifically, above the literal fold of the newspaper. In our geeky web world, the infamous "fold" is a term we adopted from the days of newsprint to delineate the area above 600 pixels of a website (on a normal resolution screen) before the user has to scroll down. There was a time when vertical scrolling could not exist in AOL, so "keeping it above the fold" became a best practice in web design strategies. However, it is not 1997 (I heart Nirvana and acid wash jeans), and web technology has clearly advanced since. Yet, the idea of “the fold” sticks.

This is a perfect example of humans evolving slower than our technology is. Clients are scared that if everything isn’t above the fold, the user will miss the information entirely; now we are forced to cram an entire page worth of content in half the space. Don’t get me wrong, I see the thought process behind “the fold;” I understand the importance hierarchy, but what I don’t get is the extreme we have brought this to. There is such a strong disbelief that users will scroll, yet the exact opposite is revealed in research that shows users WILL continue to explore a page if it is designed properly with visual cues to entice the viewer further.
 
This does not mean that you should throw out the ideology behind “the fold”; keeping traffic-driving content high on the screen is beneficial, but worrying about jamming it all in above 600 pixels will do you more harm than good. Conveying the general purpose of your site above the fold is one thing, but success should be measured below this imaginary line.

I vote for busting the myth of the fold! MUTINY!