33 replies to this topic

[cway60]

I'm not sure if this is the proper forum but I have wondering about this for a while. Is there any reliable source of data out there that would give me information on users' screen resolution preference? I am quite curious to see something like: 1024x768: 45%, 480x640 55%, etc. Is viewer screen resolution a factor for anyone when designing a site?

Thank you.

[lyn]

The stats from W3 Schools are pretty good.

I think it's worthwhile to know what the usual display resolutions are when you're designing, but it's best to a use a fluid design that will flow with different display settings.

As resolutions get higher, users become more inclined to use their browsers at less than full screen, so knowing the resolution doens't necessarily tell how your design is going to look to visitors.

L.

[copywriter]

Welcome Cway60!

[JeremyH]

The W3 stats are good at telling you general statistics, but depending on the nature of your website, the people visiting your site might have radically different averages then that of the larger sample.

What matters most to your website is your visitors, not the visitors to other websites.

Say you have a website geared towards graphic design, complete with the lots of advanced photoshop tips for CS2. You would probably have a higher percentage of larger monitor resolutions then the W3 stats.

Or, say you have a website geared towards CGA or x286 Enthusiasts. You'll would probably have a lower percentage of larger monitor resolutions then the W3 stats.

My advice is to see if your current website statistics program gives you that information, and go with that data.

[lyn]

What matters most to your website is your visitors, not the visitors to other websites.

Good point, Jeremy.
With that in mind, the W3 stats are likely to be skewed a bit toward the techno-weenie side. It does include historical data that would indicate the relative direction and speed of current trends overall.

L.

[torka]

Hi, cway60! I moved your post into the design & usability forum, as I think it might fit better here than in the copywriting area.

I agree with Lyn and Jeremy. It's more a matter of what the users to your site use, as opposed to the general web-wide statistics... and no matter what your logs (or the web-wide statistics) say about screen resolution, that doesn't necessarily equate to browser window size.

As Lyn says, best to stick with some variety of fluid design, or at least something that will scale well across multiple resolutions and window sizes.

--Torka

[bwelford]

I believe you should give a good viewing experience to at least 95% of the visitors to your website. It's tough enough to get them there so you don't want to lose them now. I believe that the web page has to look good at 800 x 600.

If your web pages have a fluid design, then you should be careful if you have text that goes full width since reading very long lines is awkward. All in all I think you run fewer risks if you go with web pages that don't exceed 740 pixels wide (to keep our Mac friends happy too. )

[maleman]

You can use scripting to determine the visitor's screen size.

Use something like if(screen.width == whatever).

[alexxa]

Be careful using scripting. Users can disable scripting in their browsers. And also quite a lot of companies blocked some javascripts for gathering user info on their firewalls.
Test your web site with and w/o javascript to see how it works and looks.

And like torka said. Screen resolution and browser size are two different things.

You can use some php code to determine screen size, but still it is screen size not browser size.

[Randy]

Welcome alexxa !

[Raphael]

FWIW, our e-commerce site is designed for a minimum of 1024x768.. Sure some people still use 800x600, but they're very few and far between these days, I would think. Your bog standard store-bought Compaq with WinXP will usually run at 1024x768 out of the box, and 9% of the users out there don't even know that they *can* change resolutions, much less how to do it.

Also, I think our marketing and design folks would have a fit if I told them they had to come up with a design that still showed everything we show now but fitted into 800x600.

There's a nice little Web Accessibility Toolbar which has a bunch of features, the most important of which (in my opinion) is the ability to change your browser window to a specific size.

Very useful for me, as I use 1600x1200 on a 21" monitor so I use it to test and see what our site looks like in smaller resolutions.

[Randy]

It's another one of those cases of knowing who your visitors are IMO.

For my sites that would naturally get a lot of people with a technological focus, 1024 x 768 or above is way up there. We're talking in the 90 percentile range or higher. (of course that's talking base resolution, not the size of the browser window.)

For other sites that are more everyday consumer targeted, I would be leaving about half of my visitors out in the cold if I designed around 1024 x 768 being the minimum.

For those sites I'm definitely sticking with 800 x 600 designs, since it's by far the safest. I can make a narrower site look just fine in a larger res, but it's really tough to do the opposite without jumping through several hoops.

[Trevox]

In the UK I'm getting a consistent 66% (+/- 1) using 1024x768 on sites I monitor (not technology-focused). Next most common is 800X600 at 18% (+/- 4), then 1280x1024 at 9% (+/- 1).

I agree that 800x600 is still the best to design for, as the white space straddling the pages on a higher res. monitor is visually appealling, whereas a 1024x768 site on a lower res. monitor looks cramped at best and downright unreadable at worst.

[Catz]

Decide according to your audience, which will vary for each site.

If creating sites for the elderly, most will view at 800x600. It's amazing how many research labs and companies have not upgraded computers in years that are still viewing at this size as well. It depends on if owners are computer and internet savy and even that sometimes doesn't help. E-commerce sites sometimes have developers working on computers that can't even keep up with the work they need to do they are so old (been there, experienced it first hand).

A high tech site for developers (especially for CSS) would be higher as most don't view at that size.

When pulling out an old laptop that hadn't been used in some time, it was totally annoying to visit sites set up for the higher resolutions since 800x600 was as large as the monitor allowed (also needed to download a more recent version of IE since the one currently on the old laptop can't even render CSS properly...something I am sure most developers NEVER consider).

Using the older computer was a real eye opener to how current sites are not user friendly to older systems and software.

This made me take a look at some info on Browsers being used on a biotech site. You would think visitors to the site would be the most up to date but these numbers might surprise you (especially those who rely on CSS and don't take older browsers into account when developing pages).

August 2005
IE 6 - 30.8%
Unknown (could be firefox among others) - 14.1%
Netscape 6 - 13.3%
Netscape 2 - 10.4% (shocking isn't it)
Explorer 5 - 7.4%
Netscape 4 - 5.6%

With a variety of bots and crawlers/spiders accounting for the rest.

That's 16% using Netscape 4 or below.

How well do the pages you create render on Netscape 4 or below? Ever taken a look to see?

This just goes to show you need to take a look at the stats for a site before you begin to work on it if at all possible.

I'm sure most everyone would assume a biotechnology site would have visitors capable of viewing pages using the most recent technology but as you can see, this isn't always the case. The company owner insisted on viewing pages at 640x480 while surfing online and refused to go higher until forced to when purchasing a new monitor.

Imagine developing for a company like that and having them review your work.
Imagine how your own pages would look when he visited them.

Some people just choose not to be tech savy, there are plenty of people out there who just aren't, but they are still going online and making purchases at sites that allow them to view their content.

[cway60]

Thanks for the input everyone. I have since installed a tracking mechanism and came up with the following results based on the past few 3000 visits, in case anyone has the same curiosity:

Resolution
1024x768 or higher: 87%
800x600: 13%

I was very excited as the site looks much better at the higher res.