Screen Resolution

[Ditzy]

It occurs to me that I should have posted my previous question in this section ... whoops ... sorry mods

When I put a page together I use percentages so that in theory a surfer will hopefully see the page more or less as I intended them to regardless of the screen resolution that they are using.

The question is are there many people out there who still use 800 x 600 screens?

[philhancox]

I think it's still a fair portion, which irritates me greatly! Looking at my own stats for different sites, it's anything between 10 and 40%. However, as I think I posted a while back, it seems Amazon don't care about 800 users any more. If you switch to 800 resolution, it has a scrollbar on the bottom. if the king of e-commerce isn't bothered about them, I'm not! Of course, I think it also depends on the site e.g. I've kept my blogs to fit in 800 but a big shopping site I've thrown into a liquid layout because 3 columns don't really work well in such a small frame. Just don't forget to test your layouts and apply things like min-width to ensure pictures don't fly out of columns.

[Ditzy]

Originally Posted by philhancox it's anything between 10 and 40%

Wow 40% is a lot more than I thought it would be :eek:

It's interesting that you mentioned your blog as that's the reason I asked the question. It's no problem designing my shop site pages to fit 800 x 600 but I've got a big empty column on the right hand side of my blog just crying out to have something in it however when I change to 800 x 600 the column disappears.

Ahh well ... such is life

[moredial]

I have a 1600 resolution screen - I use it to have many windows open at the same time, many of which are less than 800 wide.

Keep to the %age settings with min-width in em units so that the content scrolls rather than breaks on narrow windows - it is easy to make a window larger / increase resolution to see the wider content and that will keep the majority happy. There is nothing more annoying than a broken layout.

[tbp]

There aren't very many people using 800 x 600, I think 40% isn't representative of the general population, its way too high.

The resolution used to be 800 x 600 because that was the default that computers were set to when sold, and most people aren't aware of how to change it.

For a long time now, the default resolution has been 1024 x 768, and this is likely to increase as larger displays are dropping in price to quickly.

I tend to design for 800 x 600, but not for the people still using it. It's just with larger sizes you need a lot more info to fill the screen if its fully open, and this can be difficult with affiliate sites. As a result I tend to work to a width of 790 pixels, centered in the middle of the screen. Just looks good, and isn't too hard to fill with information.

[philhancox]

Did I say 40%? Holy moly I'm way too hungover/still drunk to be doing anything today. My own personal stats are between 1 and 4%. The site I work on at my 'real job' which has xxx uniques a day is almost 10%, that's 1 in 10 people, which is a significant portion.
I need to get some sleep now

[Ditzy]

Originally Posted by philhancox Did I say 40%? Holy moly I'm way too hungover/still drunk to be doing anything today. My own personal stats are between 1 and 4%.

Bless your heart

[moredial]

The lower resolutions are older computers and internet cafes using cheaper equipment. When I showed one owner of an internet cafe how to change the resolution she said she preferred the larger font sizes of the 800 resolution.

Something to remember - if you makes font sizes too small half the world can't read text that small so they need the lower resolution to be able to read the text - think beginner readers. It is always easier to read shorter text lines: think news papers.

I tend to design at about 900 width as a maximum. With margins and padding, content that I want people to see will then usually still fit on an 800 screen, with scrolling, if that is all they have available.

With the move to mobiles improving their rendering of web sites, having content that is not too wide suddenly becomes a whole lot more attractive again.

[monty]

I still access the web on a less than 640x480 device from time to time.

However people with 640 wide screens know they have what is now a small screen size. People with 800wide screens are begining to feel the same thing.

Keep in mind though that as screens get increasingly bigger, the number of people who browse full screen will fall. Quite possibly it might result in a drop in the size of the typical web browser window. Even on huge screens I rarely have a window wider than 1024.

Remember with amazon that they are an established brand. As such people on smaller displays will 'endure' the environment to make use of this established known brand. People doing casual surfing/reading might well not endure such a small size.

Either way, to enable people on compact devices to read my text, I ensure all columns will at least drop/narrow down to 468px wide (which still lets me keep a banner there).