Consensus on 800x600 vs. 1024x768

I know this has come up often, but I wanted to get more input before making a decision as to whether to change my site layout.

There are some on here who swear by 800x600, but many large sites are changing ie. CNN, NY Times, and many others.

My site's current stats are as follows...

1. 1024 x 768 pixels 13,610 58.54
2. 800 x 600 pixels 4,328 18.60
3. Other Resolutions 2,591 11.13
4. 1280 x 1024 pixels 1,846 7.93
5. 1152 x 864 pixels 744 3.19
6. 1600 x 1200 pixels 104 0.44
7. 640 x 480 pixels 41 0.17

This will be a massive undertaking, and I would love to get some input first.

Thanks guys.

Buz

 

I stick with variable width or 600x800. I don't want to make it difficult for my readers to view my site.

~Adam

 

800*600, atleast for another one year...

 

I agree, probably another year and you'll see that 18% cut in half or more I'd guess. As monitors get flatter, bigger and more economical people are replacing them ... most news ones are default to 1024*768.

For that matter, as the 800*600 diminishes, I'd be willing to bet that the larger sizes begin to increase in share for the same reasons above.

And ... I also like Adam's point - an easy reading, fast flowing page seems more palatable to most users and until more monitors are bought and/or replaced with larger ones, I'll be sticking with 800*600 for most of the sites I work on for a while longer

 

You could, of course, create alternate versions of a single page and allow your visitors to vote for their favorite. Because you are not designing for the members of DigitalPoint; you are designing for your own visitors.

 

I would definitely agree, 800x600. I still design all of my sites to 760x500 (ish). 18% is still a significant chunk.

Many moons ago (1996ish), I being well respected for my internet opinion saw a look of dismay on someone's face when they saw me testing my site in a very early version of Internet Exploder (I'm wanting to say 3.0 but perhaps earlier). I told him that around 40% of my audience saw my site that way and I just couldn't see alienating that many visitors despite his suggestion that I put up one of those pretty little "best viewed in netscape" buttons that used to be on every other site. I also remember telling him that because Internet Exploder was installed by default on every Windows 95 computer that I expected it to surpass Netscape in the near future.

I'd say the same here. 1024x768 will definitely be the norm and already is the majority, but do you want to alienate 18% of your visitors???

 

I've switched. 1024 x 768 for me.

Here's stats from my site:
1024x768 - 53.16%
1280x1024 - 21.83%
800x600 - 5.64%
1152x864 - 5.19%

5% does not justify designing a site for that resolution anymore. I'm very pleased about that too. Also, I'm using Google Video and placing two in line so that there is 850 pixels wide!

Have a look: www.googleidol.com

 

Wow - great question here... I've been fiddling around with this myself on a few sites. I am hoping that we can move up to the higher res soon. One thing to keep in mind, if you are targeting non-US traffic, you may want to stick to lower res for a little longer.

 

Be flexible. No need to lose the 800 crowd, even if their number is dwindling. It's the poor businessman who refuses to make such minor adjustments to accomodate as many customers as possible.

 

I agree on sticking with 800x600, people using 1024 aren't really affected when the page is 800px wide since they can still read normal without scrolling, but people with 800x600 will have trouble reading. I know from experience because my dad's computer back home is at 800x600 and it gets annoying when you're trying to read a page and you have to keep scrolling back and forth.

 

If you really have to use fixed design then yes I agree you should design for 800x600.

Though I like to make my sites with a fluid design that way it looks good on 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 and larger.

Holy Grail 3 col fluid left and right col fixed width.

2 col fluid left col fixed

I did not design the sites in my sig by the way except my personal one, I just do some SEO work for each of them.

 

My problem is that native resolutions of a lot of displays particularly 17" LCD's are higher than 1024 * 768 and there seems to be a widening gap between the top and bottom end of the spectrums.

I tend to design for 1024 x 768 but use a scalable approach if possible so that it scales down to 800 or up to fill larger screens. Granted it looks at it's best when using 1024 x 768 but as long as it isn't completely unusable at other resolutions I don't see it as a major issue.

If you used a fix size design it isn't the end of the world if you design for 1024x768 as it won't be unusable by 800x600 but make sure some key links or areas arn't hidden off screen to the right.

Certainly the standard in our office is 1280 x 1024 as we use 17" lcd flat panels.

 

probably leave open to every one. Or you could code so its all expandable. I saw a great site that did it very well, I will see if can find the link.

 

It seems most people are saying "Keep 800x600" when the whole question here is being asked out of context. What screen resolution you design for is COMPLETELY relative to your audience. Over at The Apple Blog we've designed for the 1024 width crowd because less than 2% of our visitors browse at anything lower. But a sight with an arguably "less tech savvy" user base would have a much higher percentage of the 800x600 crowd.

You've got to put your question (and site) in context.

 

How oldschool is 800x600!

But yeah, I guess it depends on your site demographics.

 

I heard 1024 x 768 is the 800 x 600... But I still code for 800 x 600...

 

What does screen resolution have to do with the size of people's browser windows?

You have no idea whether your visitors are browsing with maximized windows or not, whether they have sidebars open, what size icons they have, what toolbars they have, etc.

Congratulations on amassing screen resolution statistics. They tell you almost nothing about your audiences!

 

You have to make some sensible assumptions when developing any solution. You use screen resolution as a sensible guideline. If you had to design to any conceivable size of browser window you'll run into problems as you could go from 10x10 (or somehting similarly silly) all the way up to any conceivable screen resolution.

The point is that you want to maximise your website audience or at least try not to alienate any particular group.

Pesonally I discontinued designing friendly sites specifically for 640 x 480 years ago and even sites that are designed specifically to scale are designed to scale up more than down and usually I would ensure they are optimal at 1024x768 and scale fairly safely down to 800 x 600 and 640 x 480.... well I wouldn't like to say....I guess it would be useable but messy.

In cases where specific devices require alternative UI such as mobile devices traditional design isn't always the best so a secondary interface will be developed for these.

The only browser I now consider seriously below 800 x 600 is for those with personal accessability issues (i.e. not technological). In these cases is often good to make your site easy to navigate using keyboard or mouse alone, be accessible to screen readers and text browsers.

Having said all this use your common sense.
Thnk of it from a business point of view : Try to meet all target audiences but if for example you are spending days and weeks developing for mobile devices and you get 1 or two users a month that brings little or no revenue then the cost outweighs the benefits.

Just make sure you don't exclude minority goups for which there is legislation.

 

I work with 760 width. In this case all the resolutions, starting from 800 x 600 will love my work...

 

I agree and disagree. You need to make some assumptions, yes, but screen resolution is not really a sensible guide. It is a false one.

The only assumption you need is this: the larger you require your end users' windows to be, the more you will inconvenience. You can't know what that number will be, but every pixel you choose as your minimum excludes X# of visitors from having a convenient browsing experience on your site.

Now, feel free to think in terms of screen resolution when considering maximums. But there's some dangerous chatter in this thread. If 5% of your visitors are using 800x600 screen resolution, do not delude yourself into believing you are only inconveniencing 5% of your audience if you design larger than this!