Lately I've noticed an increasing amount of folded corners as UI and/or decorative elements on several web pages. However, it seems most of the sites seem to differ in what they want to convey with them.
I've seen sites or designs that use folded corners to:
- Mark an element as important.
- Mark a large link as visited.
- In the site's top corner, link to an external site.
- Act as pagination, suggesting the folded element folds away revealing new content.
- Just look nice and more "3D".
As a user, I don't know what to expect when I encounter folded corners on a site. Are there any cases when folded corners should be used - and UI hints to make them less ambiguous to the user? How about when to absolutely not use them?