Hi all,

 

When designing a website I consider the likely clientel when deciding on the screen resolution which I'm gonna work too. So, if I think that most of the clients for the site will be pretty well-off I might well ignore 800 x 600 and use 1024 x 768. There are lots of sites around (including some links on WDF) which won't render correctly on 800 x 600 but there are still plenty of monitors around running at that resolution. What criteria do you use to decide?

 

Cheers

 

Rob

there are still plenty of monitors around running at that resolution

Plenty? I don't think so. I think it's less then 5%. Also most website are working nice under 800x600, only a scrollbar appears. I think that people using 800x600 can live with it.

Stats from w3c (albeit Jan 2007) say:

 

 

Higher - 26%

 

1024x768 - 54%

 

800x600 - 14%

 

640x480 - 0%

 

Unknown -6%

 

 

14% of the world using 800 x 600 is a lot of monitors...........

http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/artic...atios-worldwide

 

also, a primarily UK site (96% UK) has only 4.8% of visitors using 800x600 or less.

So around 5% and falling........ Do you think we should now basically ignore 800 x 600 and concentrate on 1024 x 768?

I design with a maximum fixed width of 770px no matter what (an exception may come along one day but not so far).

 

This is because I've seen a lot of differing percentages and I actually know a decent amount of people who are still on 800x600. I don't feel comfortable ignoring these people at this point in time, but that's just me.

 

BTW, I found these 800x600 user stats around the web:

BrowserSize.com - 12% (current?)

OneStat.com - 8.18% (April 2007)

BrowserNews - 9% (January 2008)

 

Keep in mind that these are all tech sites, so may not represent a "real" user percentage.

I'm with you Expat on this one. I reckon I found the exception on one site and decided to design at 1024 after consulation with my client. Basically though, I stick to 800 x 600.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

I think the answer is it depends. Read this article to help find an answer.

 

If your site is aimed at older people (no offence intended here) but chances are they have slightly older PCs (in the main, not a sweeping statement) and are more likely to suffer from visual impairments, so the site should render in 800 x 600 and allow them to re-size their text accordingly. If it's a business website you're probably OK with 1024 x 768.

 

There are methods you can use to swap content around depending on the browser window size. Man in Blue has one example here and another here.

Or just give user a chance to change the width of page and font size like on http://palmia.prh.pl/demo/slide/slide.html (just play with the the sliders).

 

Still, I think http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/ResolutionLayout/ is the best way. There was an article on alistapart about resolution dependent layout.

Collison used to have a pretty good solution. Read about dropping columns at his site. Of course he's made some other post relating to that too.

 

Me? I run at 1600x1200 screen resolution, with Firefox windowed at the width of 1024px. Not sure why windowed, maybe because most sites have the awful spaces of empty area besides the actual content.

 

As I design, it depends on the project whether it will be over or under the 800 pixel mark.