Do we need to design for 800x600 ?

All my sites are currently 800x600 friendly, but I was looking in my stats the other day and it would seem that only about 2% are using that resolution.

Surprisingly 1024X768 wasn't as large a proportion as I thought it would be - 1200x1024 is taking a big chunk. Guess lots of people have 17in tft monitors now.

 

well I optimize websites for all resolutions... but general trend is obvious, next year there will be zero users using 800X

 

800 by 600, No way. I become really impossible to fit content. No I am designing layouts which are compatible with at least 1024 by 786.

However sometimes I have to design layout compatible with 800 by 600. It really becomes hard to me then yo bring out something good.

 

That's NOT true.
These are the stats for this year on one of my sites:

 1.  1024x768  339,676 57.08%
 2.   800x600  106,770 17.94%
 3. 1280x1024   56,365  9.47%
 4.  1280x800   37,562  6.31%
 5.  1152x864   19,268  3.24%
 6.  1440x900    9,189  1.54%
 7.  1280x768    6,725  1.13%
 8.  1280x960    4,414  0.74%
 9. 1680x1050    3,454  0.58%
10. 1400x1050    1,923  0.32%
11.   640x480    1,526  0.26%
12. 1600x1200    1,191  0.20%
13. 1920x1200      907  0.15%
14.  1280x720      725  0.12%
15.   240x160      528  0.09%

Code (markup):

 

I myself have got relatives who use 800x600 on a 17" screen.
Can't blame them for doing so. This is common practice among elder people. Does not mean they are to be disregarded though. Some of them do their shopping exclusively online, and if your website is targeting them, by making it not fully accessible your business is likely to pay for that on the long run.

 

I design my sites to look their best at 1024x768 but still be easily compatible (resizable) at 800*600.

I HATE PAGES THAT REQUIRE YOU TO SCROLL SIDE TO SIDE!

 

Hey thanks for the info. Your rep just went up a bit!

 

Nah, I don't design using tables, and if you use percentages, some text columns can get unreadably wide in wide-aspect screens with high resolutions.

 

Good valid point here. Thanks Gary.

 

Yes and no. It's really down to the site target audience. You wouldn't worry about having 1024x768 for a site targeted purely at internet savy people. Obviously it's a concern for a larger audience, you don't want to alienate 15% of your visitors!

 

Useful info - thanks.

 

ummm.... nobody uses tables anymore *shows the calendar... it's 2007*
do you mean div?

 

I think it really depends on your target audience. If less than 5% of my visitors use that screen resolution and I really need that extra real estate in my design, I'm not going to hold back for the other 95%. Some people still use Netscape 4.x but I wouldn't go out of my way to accommodate such a small percentage of users. There comes a time when people need to move on , upgrade and get with the times. Granted, not everyone can but again, you can't please everyone.

I still remember making the decision to stop designing for 640x480 like it was yesterday

 

I disagree. Tables is still the best (and sometimes only) method to show multicolumn data. Can be true if you run a simple blog, but on other sites sometimes you need more than DIVs and SPANs.

 

Hmm, I think they still do

 

I agree, side scrolling is a major deterant for staying on a site, it's something that turns be away almost straight away, although some sites seem to even not consider the 1024*768 people, let alone the lower.

It's surprising though that Google don't use table-less designs.

 

tables are for tabular data only... not for design
I'll stick to that

 

I doubt that your video board can handle this for long.Btw what board are you having?

 

I think that you still need to accomodate 800x600 resolution users, but do not design directly for them. I create sites that display well at most resolutions by using tables in particular ways adn images that will fill out space if needed by higher or lower resolutions.

You will always have those users who will use 800x600 because of visual impairment reasons or they have just not upgraded their monitor or graphics card.

In short, they have to be recognized, but your site should not be altered specifically for them.

Robert Rio
RFR Web Design, LLC
www.rfrweb.com

 

Good point about the "less productive" users run apps maximized?
Why would they be less productive with maximized apps?
I think for example Photoshop is an app that you HAVE to have maximized, whilst MSN Messenger or AIM is not...
So it depends on what app you are running too