March 03, 2004 | View Comments (72) | Category: Our Thoughts
Summary: What is your default resolution and when will 1024x768 become the minimum design resolution?
For one reason or another I have been putting some considerable thought into the issue of screen resolutions. A couple years ago we saw the default designing resolution move from 640x480 to 800x600 and let me tell you when it comes to design every pixel counts. So I am wondering when is the right time to start designing for 1024x768 instead of 800x600. I haven't seen a user with an 800x600 resolution for a very long time. I think one of my former co-workers used it, but he was considerably blind. Also I don't want to hear any arguments about liquid design, because even with liquid design you have to take the lowest common denominator into consideration. So I guess this poll has two questions: 1) What is your resolution? 2) When does 1024x768 become the default?
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/167
the latest stats show 1024x768 at 49% with 800x600 at 37%, so it's not safe to move to 1024 yet. (but 640s at 1% so no worries there)
in feb 2000, it was 56% 800, 24% 1024, and 11% 640
in may last year, 1024 and 800 were about equal - 42% and 44% respectively
so I'd give it a year or two. Maybe when the next version of windows comes out and doesn't support 800x600. :-)
At work, I surf 2304x864 or 2048x768 depending on the level of detail and whether I have a headache or not. (dual 17 inch monitors)
at home, I surf 1280 or 1600 on a 21 inch trinitron, depending on how high res the porn is. OK, maybe not that. lol. usually 1280, 1600 is a little too small even at 21 inches. I occasionally do it if a spreadsheet or something is wider than fullscreen.
JC (http://http;//www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
My roommate has a 19" LCD monitor, and he keeps it at 800 x 600 just for the hell of it. "I like big text, what can I say?" lol.
I don't really know when we can start designing for 1024, but I don't think I ever will. Rarely do I surf the web with a browser window maxed out to my resolution (1152 x 768, 2nd gen 15" G4 powerbook), so sites like mezzoblue — designed for 1024 or higher — force me to increase the size of my window, and I hate that.
Let the user choose.
If I have 1600 x 1200 resolution, and feel like surfing with my window smaller than the max I can possibly put it, then I shouldn't be penalized. Just like people with 1024 x 768 don't constantly have their browser window maximized.
Mike (http://phark.typepad.com)
1600 is too small for you on a 21"! Geez, JC...one word man: Lasik. Anything less than 1600 and I get annoyed.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
have to remember there are a lot of 15 inch monitors out there, still, and most of them don't even work at 1024, and if they do, it's about as readable as 1280 on a 17
JC (http://http;//www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
no thanks. I look good in glasses, and I'm not letting any lasers near my eyes til there's another 10 or 20 years for them to find any longterm affects. :-)
"Caution: do not look into laser with remaining eye"
JC (http://http;//www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
My guess is that you'll have to wait a while. You've got the last of the baby boomer generation approaching old age and bad eyesight, and even early gen xers getting to the point of needing bi-focals to see clearly. Even the younger generations who have been in front of a computer screen for pratically all their lives are going to have bad eyesight sooner.
Multiply that by the fact that outside the world of design and development, and a few other relative sparse situations, most folks just don't need THAT much desktop space or that much power in their graphics / video card.
1024 x 762 suits me at home, 1152 x 864 at work. My in-laws who are in their 80's still insist on 640 x 480 and my dad who's in his 70's uses 800 x 600. Most people I know have 1024 x 768 or 800 x 600.
Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
1600x1200 and as far as i can tell, 800x600 isn't going away anytime soon...
I also normally browse with my window shrunk down to about half the size of my desktop and if a site tries to resize it for me, it's an automatic ctrl+w.
Marcus (http://marcusvorwaller.com)
I personally use 1024x768, but only because that's as high as my 15" LCD screen will let me go. I'd like to jack it up a ways, especially when working on graphics, but don't want to spend the money on a new monitor just yet.
Not sure if you're talking about this site or not, but if you are, do you keep track of the screen resolutions used to access it? One important thing to remember about stats is that the only ones that really matter are the ones for your own site. For sites such as this one, higher screen resolutions would be much more likely to be seen, as your readers will be predominantly "informed" users, who will be extremely unlikely to run around on 800x600.
Ryan Brill (http://www.ryanbrill.com/)
I have two Dual Apple 17" Studio Displays, and I run them both at 1600 x 1200. While at times the text is hard to read (depending on what and how), I enjoy the extra screen space. There's nothing like running Photoshop full screen on one display, and Dreamweaver on the other.
When it comes to web design, I say let the user decide. That doesn't infer a liquid layout, but don't make the user enlarge his browser window a lot just to accomodate your site. Rarely just a person just surf the web, reading your entire site, and never leave - the wed wasn't designed that way.
A goal of every site I design it to code is so that at 800 x 600 the user will have no horizontal scrollbars. I do usually try and make the header and/or footer span 100% of the width, and center the content so it doesn't look lopsized for people with higher resolution displays.
My vote is to design for 800 x 600, but make it look (as good as possible) at anything higher.
Ryan J. Bonnell (http://ryanjbonnell.com/)
my resolution is 2560 x 1024. gotta love that dual monitor action!
even though most users may run a 1024x768 resolution, that does not necessarily mean that they have that much space, even in a full screen browser window. Most people who use IE6 will usually have a sidebar of some sort turned on, such as search. Why? Maybe that is how it looked when they started up the browser and don't know they can change it.
I even had an RSS sidebar running in firebird before i set up an account at blo.gs.
I also cannot fathom that everyone runs their browser at fullscreen all the time. Even if someone using AOL actually uses the AOL browser, it often times does not run full screen either.
I also believe that sticking to an 800x600 safe layout goes along with several basic principals of readability and usability, including the fact that most people do not like to read large blocks of text. They would rather have it in columns, like a newspaper.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
1280x1024 on the 17"LCD
Until 800x600 goes under 10% like we had to wait for Netscape 4...
seriocomic (http://www.seriocomic.com)
I design for 1024x768 because most of the data I collect from my users shows that their resolution is at that (mind you that most of my readers are Mac users).
personally, I run two 17" LCDs at 1280x1024.
Justin Williams (http://www.carpeaqua.com)
I *browse* at around 800x1200, i.e., half of a 1600x1200 screen. I'll never waste my entire screen on a browser -- it's too hard to read a full monitor width anyway.
As resolutions go up, it's reasonable to increase the size of your design. But as monitor sizes go up, it's not really appropriate. On a Mac running 1024x768 I put the dock on the side, so the browser is never full width.
Ian Bicking (http://blog.ianbicking.org)
1440x900 is the resolution with which I surf at home.
My site stats show 800x600 at 7%. Then again, I also have an even split between IE6 and Mozilla, so my readers obviously don't represent typical Internet surfers. Still, I design so that the content is readable on 800x600, though the layout itself (usually some graphical ornamentation) might cross that boundary.
Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)
I use 1024x768 on a 17-inch CRT. And I always end up browsing with firefox with the browser not maximized, as it usually makes sites with fluid design readable.
a layout for 1024x768 might be hard to scan because of the over-abundance of information in just one page. Just my two cents.
markku (http://rebelpixel.com/)
I have screen-estate to spare, but it will take a rather extreme monitor dpi for me to want to start designing for anything other than 800 wide. I browse with tall skinny windows. Maximized windows take too much space.
Xian (http://xian.mintchaos.com)
As screen res goes up, people will surf without their browsers in full screen mode -- I haven't run a browser at full screen for years -- usually it's around 900-1100 wide.
I think we're forgetting alternate style sheets here -- just like font sizes, color schemes, etc we can set reasonable defaults (like a layout for 800 wide), but provide alternate layouts (with an extra sidebar, or wider central column) to users with more real estate available as an option.
K10K has/had alternate (wider) layouts for it's homepage from memory -- it's my new mission to bring this into play on more sites, but always with reasonable defaults.
Justin French (http://indent.com.au)
1280x1024 / 19"
But i noticed i am not using all that space anymore. I recently took the habit to downsize the browser's window so i can see the background and the desktop messy set of icons and docs.. weird.. i guess i just want to feel like i am in a computer tv ad that shows how multimedia computers are :)
On the other hand photoshop, illustrator and every tool i use are maximised to the .. uh.. max.
I guess i browse for fun.
Vanhalle Jean-Christophe
oh i forgot about the second question.
I don't know. A designer's audience will most likely have a large screen resolution. New computers are sold with 17" but i saw a lot of people sticked to 800x600 (most didn't know they could change resolution.. or didn't understand what resolution is). I read somewhere that a (web) designer had to know his/her target. I guess it's all about surveys and server statistics then.
Vanhalle Jean-Christophe
(1) My resolution is 1152 x 864.
(2) To my mind the default resolution already is 1024x768. The reason for this is my own site visitors’ statistics. Although most of them are from Europe, still the overall trend can be easily seen. The picture used to look different one and a half year ago when the percentage distribution was about equal among 1024x768 and 800x600.
Here are the stats of ~60000 unique visitors:
1024x768 - 67.5%
800x600 - 24.4%
1280x1024 - 5.2%
1400x1050 - 0.8%
1280x960 - 0.6%
1600x1200 - 0.6%
640x480 - 0.4%
1152x870 - 0.3%
1280x800 - 0.2%
The problem for the future design could be a spread of different large size monitors, as well as the usage of web on different types of displays, such as TV.
Kaspars (http://www.osc.lv)
I'm using 1024x768 while a lot of my co-workers use 800x600 as it's easier to read text, especially if you have to sit staring at a monitor the whole day.
Most design blogs I read look their best in 1024 and above. And according to http://reinvigorate.net only 29% are using 800x600.
ps : most linux installations have a resolution of 800x600 by default..
jinesh (http://www.jinesh.org/)
I'm running a few different setups; Screen resolution at 1600x1200 and 1280x1024 with my browser window sized roughly at 900x700, and one at 1024x768 with my browserwindow maximized.
Jakob S (http://mentalized.net)
Screen resolution does not equal browser window size. My screen resolution is 1680 x 1050. My browser window is around 800 x 1000. Don't expect people to resize their browser window to make your site fit.
Roger (http://456bereastreet.com)
+1 what Roger said.
It is a fallacy to think that screen resolution equates to browser window size. That's why all these stats are so misleading: they show the machine's resolution, not the browser's.
My screen resolution is 1440 x 900 pixels. When I'm browsing the web, my browser window's width is never greater than 800 pixels wide.
Make your designs liquid and everybody wins, no matter what their browser window size.
Jeremy Keith (http://adactio.com/)
I use 1600x1200, but i do prefer to keep firefox in a smaller window so that I can bounch back and forth from it into dreamweaver/fireworks/messenger/whatever much easier.
I do think they day is come soon where we wont need to worry about 800x600. But I do hope it takes a great deal longer for people to stop developing for 1024, because that is the res that I keep firefox at.
phil.
phil baines (http://www.wubbleyew.com)
it is not correct to state that all designs should be liquid, or fixed.
what about readability and the 'perfect' line length? assuming 1em font size, adhering to 'recommended' line lengths would inform the width of parts of a design.
perhaps, like there is a 'golden ratio', there is a 'golden layout'...
pid (http://www.pidster.com)
In my experience, alot of universities, libraries and community groups still use 800*600; I guess their trying to make the computers more accessible. Until that changes I'm sticking with 800*600 as a max (won't waste my time with 640*480 though)
Chris (http://www.lineages.co.uk/chris/)
Mine is 1024x1280 (and yes, itsn't a mistake).
At home I work on 800x600.
Lukasz (http://www.dwarfscorner.com/)
@pid - golden layout, cool idea.
I'm at 2x 1024x768, but I do design with 800x600 in mind.
Mike P. (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com.com/sandbox/weblog/)
1680 x 1050 on my Apple Cinema Display, 1280 x 854 on my Powerbook and 1024 x 768 on the secondary display. At this point I try to assume a minimum of 800 x 600. For the sites that many people seem to be developing for these days, the general audience is savvy enough to have better, larger displays and set to a higher resolution.
I think we're dealing less and less with old 13" 640 x 480 displays the in the past, but what do I know?
Scott Boms (http://www.wishingline.com)
I think there will be a happy median when we start to see SVG supported by default on everyone's computer. That way I think one of the main reasons for not using liquid (fixed images) will disappear.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
On a 17" I use 1024 unless I'm doing a heavy session in Dreamweaver / TopStyle / Photoshop that requires lots of toolbars or preview windows to be open concurrently.
I design for a crammed full 800x600 layout, which means lots of lovely white space (!) for most users at 1024+
There's some talk of twin monitor setups, can someone point us in the direction of a good article on setting it up?
Adam Bramwell (http://www.octapod.org/adam)
Chalk one up for 1152 x 768 on a 15" notebookscreen. With 1024 x 800 everything is just a bit too big, and with 1280 x 1024 they are just too small.
I always surf with maximized windows. I cannot stand to surf, while I can see my other windows.
[m] (http://mantaworks.nl)
My screen is at 1024x768, but with Mozilla's RSS Reader on the side my viewport is 822x558 with the browser maximized. (at least that is what the handy Wed Developer Toolbar tells me.)
However, I believe I have the only 17 in. monitor in the building. Everyone else is using 15 inchers. Even those who have purchased new ones within the last 2 years. This past year I have seen a few finally move to LCD, so they are getting a little more space.
I also know that most all those with crt's either don't know you can change the resolution, let alone how to, or they don't what 'everything smaller'.
Did you ever notice that? To the uninformed, increasing the resolution is perceived as making the text, icons etc smaller, not increasing the work space.
So to answer your second question: we have a long way to go. Although I would agree with previous comments that if your stats for your own site indicate a limited number of viewers with lower resolutions, then by all means go big with that site, but only with that site.
As a side note, I use a larger resolution on my laptop ( I forget what it is exactly - its at home), as (I think) many others do. We generaly have the laptop's screen closer to us so the text does not need to be quite so big. It also helps that they generaly ship with the greater resolution already set. Not always the case with desktops.
waylman (http://www.achinghead.com)
I've got plenty of slightly older co-workers that cant stand anything higher than 800x600 on their 17" screens. it just looks silly to me now, but they immediately go nuts when i change them to 1024x768 to do a little work on their PCs. i still design for 800x600, and i dont see changing that for a while yet... if you want to reach people like my older co-workers, then you probably need to design to 800x600 as well.
then again, they don't "get" the web anyways, so why bother?
--andrew
andrew (http://www.walkingnorth.com)
1024x768 here.
I always surf with maximized windows. I cannot stand to surf, while I can see my other windows.
Same here!
MaThIbUs (http://www.mathibus.com/)
I always surf maximized to one monitor, not both. At home, I usually surf maximized. On my ibook, the almighty apple has deemed that 'thou shalt not maximize thy anything, for the dock-most-holy taketh preference' so I surf that in windows.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
1024 x 768 on my 12" Powerbook. Something larger on the eMac, don't remember what it is exactly. But I never have my browser maximized. It's always closer to 800 x 600 or less.
And I always design for slightly less than 800 wide. I don't know what I would put in a 1024 x 768 design. Seems like it would be too much to me.
Derek Rose (http://www.twotallsocks.com/)
1600x1200 on 21" at the office
1152x864 on 17" at home
1024x768 on the 14.1" laptop
Surfing is typically around 1024 on both work and home machines. No way can I surf maximized at 1600. But when you're photoshopping, can you even do anything at a lesser res?
I design mostly for 800, but a few web-apps have been initially designed for 1024 but scale accordingly. I like designing a fluid site that looks "decent" in both 800 and 1024. Maybe a min-width at 800 and max at 1024.
Lance E. Leonard (http://www.solarfrog.com)
18" LCD at work, and 19" LCD at home. Both are set to 1280x1024. I am a geek programmer though, and definitely ahead of the curve. Most "joe-user" PC's I sit down at are often still at 800x600.
Peter Millard (http://www.pgmillard.com)
I still design for 800x600, and truthfully, dont think it will or should change. For some sites (portals, etc.) it might be good to have 1024x768 design, but most everything else would just look odd at 1024x768 design. I just dont see being able to fit everything into that big of a design, and still make it readable.
Josh Dura (http://www.joshdura.com)
Oh and I am 1024x768 on a 17" CRT at work (would love to go 1280x1024, but my cheap company wont buy me a better monitor) and 1280x1024 on a 19" CRT at home. I cant see going any larger than that.
Josh Dura (http://www.joshdura.com)
Ah Josh I think you are looking at it the wrong way. An minimal resolution of 1024 means that I can keep this layout, widen it, and increase the text size and it should still have the same effect that it does now. Larger resolutions don't always mean having to cram more information in.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/whitespace/)
Why is everyone running 1280x1024? I run 1280x960 because it's the proper aspect ratio.
Anyway, on a 19" monitor I prefer 1280 to 1600. Higher resolution is nice for Photoshopping, but in general I like to see things as the average user will, not to mention keeping a healthy distance from the monitor.
I see no need to design for 1024x768 any time soon. The only reason I would even consider it was if I had a boatload of information that absolutely had to be above the fold.
Gabe (http://www.websaviour.com/nexus/)
Probably wider screen monitors, like apple displays and laptop displays, Gabe.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Jesus, some of you browse with some large ass resolutions. I browse at 1024 and that is fine with me. If I go above that, the text is small then hell and I have to squint to see certain things. I haven't touched any of the settings to increase font size or anything, but still, that is a large screen resolution.
I would reckon that 800 x 600 is still quite used. Point is, you will never satisfy every customer. I mean, you can't help it if someone has their defaul window to a certain size when they click a link and open it in a new window. I have had it where my window had a width of about 400 pixels because I moved it to see something in the background of my cpu, and when I clicked an external link that opened up a new window, it opened it to a width of 400 pixels, so some people might have that on their's as well.
my 2 pennies
bryan (http://www.gamecubecheats.info)
Scrivs, yeah thats true, I didn't think about it that way. I guess I have just gotten myself used to the smallish fonts, and 800x600 layout :)
Josh Dura (http://www.joshdura.com)
19 inch LCD [1280x1024]
800x600 isn't going anywhere soon. A friend of mine has a 17inch CRT screen and uses it at 800x600. When I set it to 1024x768 he looked surprised, he never thought of doing that. He has never switched back to the lower resolution. I should remember to ask him if that is because he likes the higher resolution or because he would never change the computers settings. I think the later is true, and true for many other users.
Egor Kloos (http://www.dutchcelt.nl/weblog/)
1280x1024
I code for 800x600 not for resolutions sake but mainly as it imposes a usable size on most web designs. Any more than that and you can swamp the user.
Gordon (http://www.snowgoon.co.uk)
I'm afraid that we can't quite forget 800x600 yet. I'm running 1024x768, but I know plenty of people that are running lesser resolutions. One reason why I'm in favour of liquid designs (not to get off topic here ;))
David House
+1 what pid said.
The main concern with design widths should be readability. Print design suggests around 10 words per line. Obviously we can go over that for the web, but very long line lengths should be avoided.
One positive thing that came out of the 800x600 design spec was limiting line length and content.
Question:
If we increase the base design width, what else will we put on the page? I hope not more columns of information and ads, that would really clutter things up.
Kyle (http://www.kylehaskins.com)
I've seen that the majority of people I've worked with leave the laptops they get on the default resolution setting. Which seems to be 800x600.
Until I see those stats drop below 5% for 800x600, then I think we're stuck with it.
Tony (http://www.simiandesign.com/)
work: 1280x1024
home: 1600x1200
notebook: 1400x1050
I limit my screen res at work because I fell that at anything higher and I lose the details in designing. I never use a browser that is maximized, it's usually at 1/2 or 1/3 of the screen (I multi-window a lot).
Terence Ordona
I'm on 1280x960 (proper aspect ratio!) here at home (17" CRT), though I would love to get a bigger monitor or 2 to expand that resolution :).
Scrivs: as for the SVG thing, yes I agree it will make flexible layouts a lot easier. The Mozilla Foundation recently said they were putting more serious work into SVG support, so maybe we’ll see that happen in the near future.
Personally though, I don’t see much point in asking designers/developers what their screen resolution is set to, unless they’re > 50% of your target audience. Most of us who end up doing design work for the general public will have to stick to 800x600 as the lowest common denominator for some time to come.
Vinnie Garcia (http://blog.vinniegarcia.com/)
Note: it's not resolution you are asking about, the only way you can "up" your resolution is by buying a better monitor. What you are refering to is actually desktop size.
I run 1024x768 at home and at work. The issue is not what size my desktop area is set to, but what size my browser is set to. I say this because 1) I took the time to survey my site's readership to discover 90% of them are running 1024x768 or higher size for their desktop area and 2) I asked several people I knew who were running 1024x768 or better desktop areas if they ran their browser at full screen plus chrome. 90% of those people never ran their browser at full screen plus chrome.
So, in summary, even though your site's users may have a desktop area set to 1024x768 doesn't mean that you can design for that size of layout... ask them what size their browser runs at... my guess is that it's between 800x600 and 1024x768 for those who have desktop areas of 1024x768.
Nick (http://www.digital-web.com)
I guess I should back up my last post with some facts:
2004 survey responce for desktop area
Nick (http://www.digital-web.com)
Nick, I don't know that I'd really consider those facts worth paying attention to unless I was designing for their audience which is obviously above average technically (just look at the number of people on broadband vs dialup).
The link I posted above was for a detail page on the global stats of thecounter.com, probably the largest supplier of hit counters/stat trackers out there. For february they tracked 309,558,527 visitors, presumably almost exclusively to personal or small business websites (so not too much skewing from corporate users stuck on netscape 4 and 640x480). That's about as Joe User as you're going to find. And it's been around since January 2000, so you can view trends, too.
Definitely interesting to examine the stats on browsers like NN4 and watch them go from 18% in 2000 to 10% in 2001 to 4% in 2002, 1% in 2003 and
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I work for a manufacturing company that builds winches, etc for oil & gas industries. We target the US & Can, but products are used all over the world. Our stats show 45.1% using 1024x768, while 31.7% use 800x600. There's no way I could see designing a site to be larger by default, unless the audience was *very* specific and statistics known.
I used to teach community computer classes, and lots of people I taught actually insisted on 800x600. Most of the time it seemed that the low-res just helped out those with vision problems. Sure we can enlarge fonts, icons, etc, but a low-res screen is an easy answer for a non-technical, middle-aged and older person with vision problems or eye-strain.
That has been my experience anyway. :-)
Justin (http://bluealpha.com)
I'm running 1280x1024 at the office and 1024x768 on my laptop. I don't max my browser window either although I tend to go near 1024 when surfing on my laptop. And most people I know running 1024 actually max their browser window for some strange reason.
I guess it depends on the job at hand. I still design most of my standard sites for 800x600 but I've gone 1024 on quite a few sites where I had to pack in a lot of stuff (intranets etc.) and haven't had any complaints yet - and most of my customers aren't exactly techies with a monitor fetish. As far as I can tell no one I know (or work for) runs 800x600 themselves although I guess they would appreciate their public sites designed so that all potential customers get a decent experience.
In conclusion: Designing for 800x600 primarily has to do with not forcing people to max their viewport which I hate having to do myself. But if I feel I gain something by doing so, it seems as if I can get away with it...
Pollas (http://pollas.dk)
Personally I use 1152x864 for my screen, but I hate to have my browser maximized, it is usually about 1000x800. If and when I use a fixed design I aim for 800x600 and up.
Ben de Groot (http://www.stijlstek.nl/codematters)
1600x1200 at work and at home. Typical browser size is about 800x1000.
I design all my stuff at a maximum of 760px or so this allows for plenty of browser chrome and a little extra for those pages where the scroll bar pops up.
So I guess I'll keep designing around 800x600 for awhile, at least for mainstream production sites, other sites...well...I guess that's a matter of personal taste.
James
I run dual monintor setup with a resolution of 1600x1200 each but I don't browse full screen and with the RSS panel in firefox its more like 1000 x 1000. In the future if we was purely designing for computers then we could increase the standard size to 1024 x 768 in about a year or so but with the proliferation of alternative devices we will have to either use style sheet switching, liquid designs or stick to a small fixed resolution design to cater for the differnet access methods.
Darren White (http://www.dlw.me.uk)
I run 1440 x 900 on my 17" Powerbook and even though there are sites that have 1024 x 768 and there very cool looking, they offen make me make m resize my browser like seeing to web pages at the same time, seeing a site and itunes, etc.
Brad
Designers should create for the technology in widespread use. 1024 X 768 has been the minimum standard for quite some time now. Screen/monitor technology drives resolution. Current technology for screens is 1024 x 768. Monitors 17" and larger and Laptops use 1280 X 1024 as standard resolution. Designers should create with this in mind if they want to target the mass audience.
John
Running a 19" monitor at 1600x1200 lets me have large, SMOOTH text that is very easy to read, instead of ugly jaggy text that hurts my eyes. I can customize the font and size of system text in Windows' appearance preferences. I can change at least one of the zoom, font, or text size in every text-oriented program I use. A large resolution gives me the freedom to decide what deserves screenspace!
More comments, and later screenshots for proof (when I get wiki attachments working), will be at http://arndis.godsong.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?pagename=Aerie.LowResIcky.
Bronwyn Boltwood
I think ideally (though not necessarily easy) websites should be resizable. I know it's not always easy, but there are a number of browser and screen res detecting scripts. Perhaps you could make a site for 800x600 (and lower), and one for 1024x768 and higher, then put in a redirect script depending on browser/screen res?
And using % where possible instead of absolute pixel numbers will make it viewable on the maximum number of systems available, independent of whether the browser window is maximised or not.
Of course, this brings in extra javascript, which some browsers do not support or which some people may have turned off...
I have a 17-inch CRT at 1600x1200.
j
I personaly use 1024 for web browsing and stuff, and 1600x1200 on a second monitor for design stuff.
When does 1024x768 become the default?
Does it realy matter? I agree, taht web pages should be resizeable. Only there are some problems with them- it's kinda hard to read a 80% wide paragraph on 1600x1200 at 10pt. There's a reason why do magazines have columns and not just text from one side to another! So pages should also offer to select font size.
And actualy the statistics about 800s or 1024s are not verry objetive, as there is no guarantee that the user has the browser on full screen. I've seen many PCs with high resolutions, where IE has the Favorites panel on the left, and so on..
Optron
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#1
1600x1200 here. Guess I should have mentioned that.
I have no answer to the second question and that is why I asked.
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