Designing websites: 800 or 1024?

[Oneway]

A question raised by juncmodule in this thread made me do a little research and brought up some interesting issues.

In mentioned thread, i stated that web designing for the 1024x768 resolution had become the standard. Juncmodule wanted to know if i had facts backing this up so he could start a war with his boss about why he is being restricted to 800x600.

The reason i mentioned 1024 as being the standard was mainly a hardware argument. It is safe to assume that over 90% of web-users have either a 17" CRT monitor, or a 15" TFT monitor (or bigger sizes). Both mentioned sizes can comfortably display in the 1024 resolution. TFT monitors even have 'native resolutions' in which they display the screen best. My 15" TFT screen looks godawfull when is has to display 800x600. So in the harware side of the question, 1024 resolution can be concidered as a standard.

However, there are a couple of other things i hadn't thought of.
As it turns out, there is quite a group of people that do have 1024 (or higher) resolutions, but don't make it all avaiable to the browser window.
Surfing without a maximised browser window, or having a browser sidebar open (like history or favourites) all take away from the amount of pixels available to display the website.
So even if your website visitor statistics show that 95% of your visitors has a screen resolution of 1024 or higher, it doesn't automatically mean that all of those 1024 pixels are available.
And working for, or owning a webdesign company means taking this into account and delivering websites that will look good on as much screens as possible.

This means that for now, we're limited to making either fixed width 800 pages, or using a more fluid design that can grow in width when more space is available (like the ags homepage).

Sorry junc, but your bosses still seem to be right.

Now, i'd like to find out about your browsing habits (not just juncs habits, YOURS) . What resolution do you use? Do you have, as mentioned, a non-maximised browser window or some side-bars open.
What is browsing like on those guargantuan resolutions of 28000 x 23000?


interesting read

[scotch]

It's quite surprising to me that some browser stats pages say there are more people running in less than 1024x768 than above it. So if I was being paid to design I'd have to make sure that it was viewable at that resolution without too much scrolling. I don't think it's a good idea to consider any resolution a standard, although half of people do use 1024x768.

I use a reasonably high resolution (1800x1350 or something) because I use a 21 inch monitor. Not the ideal resolution to view most websites, but I guess if you chose to use a high resolution, you get used to reading 40 word long lines in smallish fonts... it'c certainly better than viewing in a window. My mind can't deal with so many things on screen at once. You're right about the visible area varying a lot. I tend to browse with a sitebar extended, so currently I'm typing this in a brower window with a visible area of 1477x1244.

Must suck to be a webdesigner. Fixed size designs only look good around the resolution they're intended for, and proportional designs suffer from rounding bugs and no end of other headaches. Whenever I do some webdesign all I can think is "there HAS to be a better way than this!"

[ildu]

800x600. I'll explain later.

[DoorKnobHandle]

I run 1280x1024. On the right, there's the Trillian Messenger window (which I minimize at times when I want to have more space), and on the top, there's WinAMP.

[juncmodule]

Wow! Thank you, you rock.

This all started with this thread[url] by Edmundo. His design looked great, but I had this little bug nagging at me about not leaving 800x600 behind, but nothing to back it up.

I am actually surprised that we have users that use such large resolutions. Being pixel pushers I assumed that a majority of resolutions would float toward the 1024 area. I'm curious about what someone like Helm runs, and what his fellow pixel artists run.

As an adventure game developer I feel that creating a personal website above the 800x600 size is kind of wrong anyway. I am assuming that most folks who play these games may not have super fast computers, because why upgrade beyond a couple hundred MHZ and above a 14" monitor if you spend most of your time in 320x200 running a game that demands no more than a 486 Popular statistics aside, I consider us to be outside of popular statistics.

On the other side of the resolution issue is the guideline that says something like "easily readable". This is so wildly open to interpretation. However, if you are reading single lines of text all the way across a 1024 screen this will in fact make your eyes tired. Smaller reading width (but not too small) is easier to read. However, if you are operating at some crazy resolution then I could see this as a problem too.

I believe in making a website for the visually impaired no matter what you are doing. Even if your designing for the latest First Person Shooter that requires super fast reflexes and a uber resolution, there isn't anything that says a visually impaired person wouldn't be interested in learning about the game, maybe even enjoy observing matches, or playing the game and becoming better at it than everyone else. I just don't think anyone should be left out.

Anyway. I run at 1024x768 and usually have my browser maximized with nothing else open. I hope we get a lot of posts here. It would be really great to have these stats for the community.

later,
-junc

[SSH]

I hate maximised windows, so despite a 1280x1024 screen, I'm using a browser thats <1024 wide. Also, if I use opera, I like the possibility to have the tab tab vertical on the left which will chop off another 100-odd pixels.

[Kweepa]

I use four different computers regularly:
work machine 2x1600x1200 (browser window ~ 1100x1100)
pc 1280x1024 (browser window ~ 1000x1000)
imac 1440x900 (browser window ~ 1200x800)
laptop 800x600 (browser window ~ 800x600)

[MashPotato]

I use 1152x864. Ã,  If I'm staying on a page for a while, I use maximized windows, but I initially open linked pages in slightly smaller windows. Ã, I don't use any vertical toolbars, nor any horizontal toolbars besides the ones that are standard for the browser.

[Radiant]

The moral of the story is that you cannot assume that people use a certain size of browser window. A good designer should also take into account the visually impaired (who use extra-large fonts) and people with very old systems that run in 640x480.

Anything that can be sized in HTML can also be sized in percentages. So, don't make your table 800 pixels with four 200-pixel columns, make the table 100% wide with four 25% columns. I realize this gets trickier with images, but it's possible to work with that; at any rate, websites should be functional first, flashy a distant second.

As a benchmark, try if your site works properly in Lynx. It should, and most major sites do. Many amateur sites don't because they use "clever" hacks.

[DGMacphee]

At work, I design with 800x600 screens in mind. It's a minimum standard even though most people I know use higher screen sizes.

Just another question: could a website with a fixed screen size of 1024x768 display poorly if it was viewed on, say, a PDA?

[scotch]

I haven't used a pda browser, but browsers like Opera for mobile devices do a lot of work trying to make normal pages display acceptably on tiny screens. I think as long as you don't do anything too unusual they're going to work ok.

[Pumaman]

I agree that websites really must support 800x600 -- as the stats that scotch linked to prove, 20% of web designers still use it, and that proportion is likely to be much higher in the "casual user" segment of the market.

Hell, it's only been a few months since I finally moved from 800x600 to 1024x768 because my old monitor died; for many people there's simply no reason to want a higher resolution.

[2ma2]

800x600 for all of the aformentioned reasons.

I use 1240x760 and never have the browser maximized for readability reasons mostly. I'm making a website now that is made to look good with a fixed height rather than width using iframe (saga.riotamot.com.. but it's not ment to be published yet, and it is in swedish so.. well.. arr..)

[Evil]

Who is the audience? Computer geeks who will run a massive res? Retired seniors who might run a 640x400 for their eyes? There are so many different reasons to use many different resolutions.

[Gilbert]

Definitely recommended that web pages should at least be viewable at 800x600 at least (there're pages that're designed for 1024x768+ and say scroll bars disabled, meaning some of the info, buttons, etc. that were croped away). Like for example, I'm still using 800x600 here with this crappy 14" monitor at work (changing it to 1024x768 will make me blind due to the low refresh rate).

[HeirOfNorton]

I run at 1024x768, but really only because that's what resolution was set as a default.

However, if I'm on a website with any substantial reading, I always increase the font size to make it easier, so the resolution doesn't really mean much from a design perspective.

HoN

[Toefur]

Because so many different people have so many different resolutions, it's always best to design (I forget what the actual name is) by not using fixed widths, but on percentages. Sites like this look really bad if someone is using a huge resolution, generally, but it's only a very small percentage that actually does.

I find that it really isn't very hard to design a site that can look fine in both 1024 & 800, though it's difficult to design for 640.

That said, I'd never do a design that needed horizontal scrolling in 800*600. Alienate far too many visitors that way.

Also, there's nothing I hate more than not having my browser window fulling maximised.