Emily Smith explores the history, research and controversies around the topic in her article, “The Fold Exists but Does it Matter?”  She concludes that “since we have no control over how people access our sites and what portion they see, we need to focus on the things we can control.” She offers several suggestions for making careful and educated decisions about the content above the fold, and providing indicators that encourage people to explore the rest of the page.

Do you want to see what areas of your site’s pages are typically above the fold? Try Google Browser Size. Enter your site’s URL, and this tool displays it with a transparent overlay indicating what percentage of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least that size or larger.

How about you? How do you make decisions where to place key content? I’d be interested in hearing your strategies!

TimThumb is a is a popular script that is used by many WordPress themes and plug-ins to manipulate image files. Unfortunately the TimThumb developers left open a doorway through which hackers can insert code into WordPress template files. This code adds links to Russian sites and inserts malware to try to infect the computers of anyone who visits the infected site. Google has begun listing infected sites as malware and blocking them.

If you have a WordPress site, how do you know if it has been infected or is  vulnerable to attack?

1. First use Sucuri to scan your website for malware. Sucuri checks 10-12 links on each site. This is sufficient if all your site pages and posts use the same template files, but if your site uses multiple templates (e.g., blog, page, home page, single-column, multi-column), make sure you scan at least one example of each template. If the scanner finds problems, follow the suggestions there.
2. Site clean? Great — no malware has been installed. But your site may still be vulnerable to attack. The good news is that many theme and plugin developers have already updated their code. Update your theme and plugins to the latest version.
3. Some plugins, such as the popular Verve Meta Boxes, are no longer actively supported and have not been updated. To be sure you get all copies of TimThumb updated, search the files in your plugins and themes directories for “timthumb.php.” If you find a copy that has not been updated as part of a plugin or theme update, you can replace it with a new version. Download the latest TimThumb file from http://code.google.com/p/timthumb/.
4. Some developers have changed the name of the TimThumb file from “timthumb.php” to “thumb.php.” We recommend searching for both names, and updating all the files.

For more information on TimThumb and how to protect your site:

• Zero Day Vulnerability in many WordPress Themes by Mark Maunder – details about how the vulnerability works and what can be done about it.
• Breaking: Google starts to block hacked WordPress blogs as attack widens also by Mark Maunder – details about how and why Google is blocking infected sites.
• WordPress Codex: Hardening WordPress – good practices for protecting your WordPress site from hackers.

Note that this vulnerability is not unique to WordPress. Some Joomla and Drupal themes and plugins also use TimThumb, and all the warnings apply to them as well.

How did they do it? Smashing Magazine went to the designers and developers at Wieden+Kennedy (W+K) looking for answers. In Behind The Scenes Of Nike Better World, they talk about the goals of the site, the creative process and technical considerations. Then they piece together the techniques used and showcase some other sites using parallax scrolling techniques.

A recommended read for creatives and geeks alike.

I went online and did searches for this (widely reported) problem and fixes. Evidently the problem is not with the OS itself, but with fonts that are broken or duplicated. It’s not clear why they are suddenly causing problems in the new release, but the remedy is to fix the fonts, not ditch the upgrade. Fixes that worked for me:

1. Run Apple’s built-in Font Book. Under Collection, click on All Fonts, then select all the fonts in your library:

   
   

   

   
   

   Now go to the File menu and choose Validate Fonts. Do what needs doing to remove duplicates and broken fonts.

   
   

   This may have been sufficient to fix the problem, but being OCD — and having hundreds of fonts from myriad sources, all managed by FontExplorer Pro — I did three more steps that were recommended by folks out there on the Internets:

   
   

2. Ran FontDoctor over the system fonts; all okay. Then I ran it over my entire font collection and threw out a bunch of junk so that I won’t be introducing more broken fonts into my active font folders.
   
   
3. Cleared the Firefox cache. (Firefox -> Preferences -> Advanced)
   
   
4. Closed all running applications, then used the Terminal to type in the magic incantation to clear the system font cache:  sudo atsutil databases -remove
   
   
5. Immediately restarted my Mac.

   
   

All problems cleared up and my fonts are all fresh and shiny clean.

For more information on this problem, see these Apple support forum threads: “10.6.4 Totally Destroys Your Fonts” and “Fonts got f***ed up after I updated to 10.6.4.” See also this quick overview on Mac font issues, and this awesomely detailed online manual on font management in Mac OS X.