It seems like an age ago now since we went through the transition of designing websites for 640×400 to 800×600. For the last couple of years we’ve been in the transition from 800×600 to 1024×768.
To explain to those that don’t quite understand what I’m talking about, I’ll explain a little more. In recent times most web designers have been designing websites for computers with a screen resolution of 800 x 600 pixels.The reason for this was that if you designed your website for a higher resolution, you were likely to make the viewing and usability of your website quite difficult for users with a resolution of 800 x 600 (which was the standard).
With the advent of new more powerful graphics cards, huge resolutions has become the standard when purchasing a new PC or laptop. It would be rare to find a modern PC with a resolution less than 1024 x 768 nowadays. Nowadays statistics of people using 800×600 range from as little as 12% to 20%. For me personally, that’s a statistic that is too high to ignore these users.
Recently we’ve also had an upsurge in people using these so called Eee PC’s when on the road. The majority of these in the 7″ size range have a resolution of 800 pixels or less and what are these systems built for? Using the web.
Unless a client specifically requests that their site is built for a higher resolution, I’d recommend using a resolution of 800 pixel width.
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#1 by Richard Hearne at November 17th, 2008
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Interesting – the rise of the netbook may throw some interesting issues into the mix, but I also wonder if these netbooks are now veering towards larger 9″ displays @ 1024 res? Maybe what’s needed is more control to serve different themes based on viewers settings? One of the nice things about Wordpress…
#2 by Dave Jeffery at November 17th, 2008
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Hmmm, I would take the opposite approach. Unless there is a specific reason for designing at lower resolutions (and there are plenty of valid reasons) I design at 960px/980px wide.
On an average site you will find that 80% of website visitors will have a browser width of >1000px. We found this out when collating data from FoldSpy: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/11/23/screen-resolutions-and-better-user-experience/
And it’s not like you are losing the other 20% it’s just that they will get a horizontal scrollbar. Most smart web designers will use content that is grater than 800px from the left margin for supplementary content only (i.e.. right sidebar).
#3 by Tom Doyle at November 17th, 2008
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@ Richard, yes there are of course the 9″ and above. My preference myself would be the 7″ – or sure you might aswel have a laptop!
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Also in an ideal world the different stylesheets for the different resolutions are a great idea. But it’s convincing the client that it’s worthwhile to do this, for a little extra money.
@ Dave, well 20% of people would have difficulty viewing your website and that for me is just too large a risk to take when you can just as easily create designs that fit nicely into all resolutions without any issues.
In relation to supplementary content, I would have a different opinion on that. If it’s supplemnetary why is it there at all???
I can see this point of view it we are talking about banners or something like that. But in reality to get the best return from your website, all your content is important, so you need to maximise the amount of people that can see it as you had envisaged. They shouldn’t for example, have to scroll across to see your call to actions.
#4 by Dave Jeffery at November 17th, 2008
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Tom:
By supplementary content, I mean content that is not part of the main body of content. For example if you resize this page to ~800px wide then you can still read the blog post perfectly, you will only need to scroll horizontally if you want to get to categories or archive months. In my opinion that is perfectly acceptable for 20% of users. If they need to scroll just to continue reading a sentence then yes, it’s a problem.
#5 by Tom Doyle at November 17th, 2008
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@ David – on a blog, yeah that’s probably fine – but with a corporate website – I’d have to disagree.
In my opinion every element of the sites content should be accessible to all without the need to scroll horizontally.
#6 by Zoli Erdos at November 17th, 2008
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Horizontal scrolling is a major pain – the very reason I got rid of the first eee PC (thanks for the link, Tom).
Vertical scrolling is less painful but still not ideal .. for just browsing, OK, but think of any input form or edit window where the action buttons are missing – some at the top, others at the bottom, you keep on scrolling forever.
That said, I would not go backwords – expect netbook makers t wake up soon. Not even the current 9″ or 10″-ers do it, they all stop at 600 vertical resolution. The only exception is the 12″ Dell, but it is rendered slow by Vista.
Still, I am convinced we’ll be seeing 10″ (12″) netbooks soon with 800 vertical res.
#7 by Tom Doyle at November 18th, 2008
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@ Zoli – agreed vertical scrolling can be a pain too when the screen height is small – but horizontal is much worse in my opinion.
I personally wouldn’t opt for a 12″ eee pc, sure my first laptop was a 12″, I’d feel like I was going backwards!
The whole notion of the eee PC appeals to me for when I’m on the road. But I merely want it to be something I can access the internet with and collect emails when I’m on the road. I know I could just get a blackberry, but I like the idea of only collecting emails when I decide, not when dictated to by a phone.
#8 by cornelius soyo at February 10th, 2009
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I tend to go on Tom Doyle’s side of this one – but it really depends on what the site is for, and who will be visiting it. Bottom line, these smaller laptops are changing things… and as a result, that ~20% 800×600 is going to hang around for awhile. You know, I have visited a number of older sites set up for 800×600, and most of them look fine on my 1600 wide screen, I have no problem using them – even if they aren’t dynamically adjusting. Would I want to use them if they were publishing online articles? Maybe not. But, if they are a corporate site with limited content and maybe a picture gallery or two, the width makes very little difference, and readability is more about font size than display width. One of the advantages of a larger display is having multiple sites showing at one time… so even for ‘dynamic’ sites, I will many times shrink them down to their minimum size so I can have 2 or 3 sites showing to me. So I just don’t see the real issue here. And when I consider the difference between looking at an 800×600 website on my large TFT screen (easy) vs. trying to read a 1024 wide on a 12″ screen???? Maybe I’m too old, but that doesn’t sound like a good time for me…