But now mobile is on the rise, and we as designers have got to start thinking small again. Fortunately, we can serve up two versions of the same site with different ways to interact with the same content. (as long as we remember to design for mobile in parallel)

I think we’re about to transition in the mobile space.. right now, people realize that they’re on a mobile device, and they realize that not everything works on that device. I’ve certainly encountered sites and services that just took so much time to use on my tiny phone screen, that i just put it off until i could get to a desktop. But that will change soon.

Right now, I’m happily surprised when i come upon a site that serves me a full-featured mobile interface. Its not the norm, however. Soon it will be the norm, and I’ll start to expect it and be disappointed when its not there. I’ll become bitter and tweet that nice 960-wide website into shame over ignoring its mobile users!

So maybe the concept of the fold really does go away, but is replaced by this ongoing consideration of mobile device viewports.

Someone needs to do some eyetracking studies of mobile users. Does any data like this exist?

I also agree with you that the viewport is important design wise in many ways, especially for small business websites where the website as a billboard analogy (with the customers driving by them) is especially true.

At any rate, I’ve found that the average viewport has changed over the last few years in that it has become wider due to the 16:9, 16:10 monitor ratios that are now ubiquitous (both on desktops and obviously on laptops and mobile devices). It’s allowed me to widen my designs and thus get more content into the viewport on initial pageload if that makes any sense.

Unless you are targeting these users specifically would you recommend catering to their screen sizes more so than standard screen sizes?

Overall I agree that we should not force the user to scroll excessively, and proximity should be a consideration even outside of the fold discussion, but are we stil binding ourselves back to cramming content on the first screen just becasue it’s seen first?

Serving up a mobile version of a site is a good start and Im sure we will start seeing more and more of this type of scenario become a player.

The idea of a viewport should not be overlooked, however. Users know how to scroll, but they are going to have a better experience when they don’t have to scroll up and down multiple times to read or interact with elements at the top and at the bottom. Seems like common sense from a designer’s perspective, but when you’re using a smaller laptop or netbook, you really notice how big the page is. If you’ve got interactive elements on the page, consideration should be given to their proximity and placement so as not to force the user to scroll excessively.

There is also a finer point to this- user attention span. Again, users know how to scroll fine, but it doesn’t mean they’re paying as much attention to the content when they get to the bottom. Mr Nielson commented on this topic today as well:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html

No, the web is not a newspaper. But we need to remember that our pages are often much larger than the viewports through which users will be experiencing them.