John Martz's IE6 denial message

It has already made it's way around the blogosphere (that word still doesn't sound right), but in case you haven't seen it, here's John Martz's IE6 denial message for Momentile.com. I also thought it was somewhat related to the previous post on the fold, where I griped about IE6. He just released it under the Creative Commons license for use on your own site, too! Also, a bit of process work on his blog.

Where's the fold?

This is gonna be a more tech-specific post (sorry, no pictures). Everyone in web design knows about that little bugger called the "fold." Simply defined: the point at which you need to scroll your browser to see more content on a web page. It's a horizon of sorts, in the vertical dimension of your website. So, where's it hanging out these days? Our designer extraordinaire, Samantha Oliver, pointed me to this great article which places the fold between the 570px-610px range (on a 1024x768 monitor). The author of the post, John Ellis, asks if designing to the fold is even relevant anymore—if it's given more weight in web design than it deserves. It's a good read, no matter which side of the fence you happen to be on.

I also thought I'd check in on the latest browser and screen specs of web-users from w3schools.com:

Screen
As of January 2009, 36% of users are at 1024x768. 57% are at higher resolutions. Last year 1024x768 was at 48%, so i suspect the number will be in the low 20s in 2010—hopefully being phased out a few years from now.

Browser
Firefox currently has the lead at 47.7% as of May 2009, with IE7 at a distant 21.3%. IE6 is stilling hanging in there at 14.5% (oh, how we can't wait to see you go, for .png adoption alone).

I suspect the fold will be around as long as we have a minimum screen resolution to design to. The thing is, solid standards like 1024x768, 800x600 and 640x480 don't really exist anymore. A quick survey of my Sitemeter stats shows 16 different screen resolutions, ranging from 320x396 to 2048x1152!

For now, you can pretty safely say the fold exists at around 600px. I guess time will tell.

Good Things Should Never End

--> Good Things Should Never End

If you liked Crappy Cat, you'll be sure to like this website. It won a Webby Award, and claims to be "the world's first never ending website." I haven't seen it end, yet...so their claim appears to be true. Ooodles and oodles of fun things to interact with, on a continuous rainbow of FUN!

Welcome to the Land of Minuit

--> Minuit

This is a really fun site I just found on Beautifully. It appears to be a the website of a New Zealand indie band. You start by picking and naming a character, who you navigate around a circular landscape. It's simple, but a playful way to seek out and explore common band info like News, Guestbook, Gallery, etc...

Got Milk?

--> got milk?

Thirsty? Cookies welcome. Lactose intolerant applicants need not apply ;)

Great site design and overall concept. Take special note of all the attention paid to transitions and sound design.

Beautifully

Looking for a design pick-me-up? Jay passed this great website on to me today. It's a design portal of sorts that tracks current trends in web design by showcasing a ton of cool sites. There's a lot to look at, especially if you're looking for innovative design solutions or just a lot of cutting edge Flash sites.

--> Visit Beautifully

There is a similar site I used to frequent called linkdup that has a bunch of great design as well. I don't know if they update it anymore.