Adactio: Journal—The landing zone
May 23, 2025
But there is no fold. We pretended that everyone’s screens were 640 by 480 pixels. Then we pretended that everyone’s screens were 800 by 600 pixels. But we never really knew. It was all a consensual hallucination. Even before mobile devices showed up there was never a single fold.
Even if you know that there’s no literal page fold on the web, using the phrase “above the fold” is still insidiously unhelpful.So what’s the alternative? Well, James has what I think is an excellent framing: The landing zone.
Jeremy Keith challenges us to reconsider one of the longest lasting anachronisms we use when describing web pages–’the fold’ (a term that comes from the newspaper world). He amplifies James (last name I can’t find!) suggested framing–’the landing zone’.
