set-up a google analytics account, see how many if any users come to your say with a 800x600 resolution, if its 10% or less i say the hell with and live it alone and its not worth it this may be bad advice but i say please your target audience and NOT everyone else and if someone is reading your site in a 800x600 resolution they're probally old and will have a hard time understanding your navigation, its 2008 not 1980 lol
OMG...MySpace, MTV, FaceBook, popsugar, perez hilton and the list can go on and on...these are million/billion dollar websites with millions and millions of users and all do NOT accomodate for the 8% that uses 800x600px, man you must be getting alot of traffic, since you say they leave these sites and come to yours, lol. you TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE, that's the number one rule in usability! hmmm, seems like you must target old n cheap users, lol
I disagree. Just because the big sites all have invalid code (and they do, cause they're lazy) doesn't mean they are not losing money from customers who are forced to scroll back and forth just to read each sentence. But that's me, I HATED doing that when I had my Gateway laptop. Target got sued recently for not being accessible to everyone. Who's their target audience? Just normal people who like to buy ugly stuff : ) that means everyone as far as web design... Yeah, if you have a WOW gaming site then you do have a target audience, but if you sell widgets you want every paying customer to have 0 problems going through your site. Since when are mobile phone users old and cheap? Heck, my phone is cheap and doesn't go online or play games... definitely for the younger, moneyd crowd. College students using that donated CRT screen are pretty old too, huh, and they'll never earn any money right? Not trying to be mean but if you discrimminate against people then you get what you get. And if it's your own private site you can do whatever you want. If you are being paid as a web designer though, to make sites for companies, don't screw them over by blocking out potential customers. I doubt I have a single blind visitor to my sites (but who knows), but damn, if they want to visit the site they have no problem, and it didn't cost me crap in terms of time or work to include them as a purchasing population (other than the time it took to learn the techniques and test in JAWS etc, which I consider enhancing my value as a web developer). When you write for a business, you have no target audience, you have anyone in the world coming who might buy something. My opinion anyway. Since I don't want to pay to see what they recommend, can you just say it? That link says Order A Copy... since I don't work for the US, the US gov't, or anything, I'm just curious. Percentages for large boxes I have found to be a pain and inconsistant outside a range of widths on various browsers, which is why I don't size my sites with it. I also generally don't go fully liquid unless the design is mostly horizontal (a forum is a good example of a horizontal design... it doesn't even look bad on a 26" monitor with like 3000px resolution). I have more control over where my boxes go with min and max widths, while still accommodating 800x600 (with a single stylesheet). Means I'll have a big gap on my current machine, and things won't line up right in some of my browsers, but if the design is loose enough, it'll work (if you center it). I generally don't look at design like "You want your layout to be about 900px wide." I just don't set anything up that way-- the content or the design sets a width, for me, not the other way around. Mostly, I don't want the boxes to squish too small and lose coherency if someone sets the browser to something smaller than 600x800 and don't want huge gaps of whitespace when viewed on the 26" monitor.
Here is a link to the original free version. Same page: http://usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines_book.pdf I apologize about the first link. It is the one I used. The free one has pretty much the same information though. Here is what it says, note that this was written by several usability experts, most all with PH.D's, and are well known in the field. Also note that the main reason to do this is just to accommodate the greater audience. This thread has gotten way out of hand. Nobody says you have to build a website any particular way. You are allowed to build a site 300 x 250 if you want, and stuff it with an advertisement with nothing else in it. The beauty of the web, and web design, is really, you can do anything you want. Often many people don't know how, or don't care to, do some basics, like set width to percentage, or font size to em, but the world will continue to go on. People will also continue to visit those websites. eBay is an excellent example of that. My perspective though, is that of usability. Also, I'm done watching this thread
wow, they're lazy! Mark Zuckerburge (facebook creator), Tom (Myspace guy), Yahoo, google and all the other big wigs out there are lazy! yes thats true target was sued... http://www.searchenginejournal.com/targetcom-sued-over-lack-of-alt-tags/2922/ but look at the irony... your sites do need to be accessible, but you need to draw a line, the most important part of a website is content, content, content...you can have the worst site, slowest and least accessible (ex myspace, every time i go to it, its slow and there's way too much going on, music, videos playing animated gif's etc..., but ppl love the content) oh n about the target being sued, that should def. be thrown out of court! cause if we can start suing for n alt txt then I'm going to quit my day job and start suing!!!
Actually, when I first heard about it, I checked out Target's site and there was a lot of stuff that as far as I could tell WERE put in there for accessibility (like use of title attribute in certain places)... lack of alt text isn't really the biggest issue, it's more the site overall (which like most sites, as far as accessibility are usually a mixed bag, some things done right and other things just not thought of). And really, if this were a lawsuit intended to influence the law, there are better sites to choose than Target's. Main point was, it may indeed affect the law, either the Americans With Disabilities Act or possibly influence international law regarding websites (the UK is much stronger with their laws and I keep hearing that the EU in general may follow them, but then, I'm not holding my breath), and that if you are making commercial sites, even if your client disregards disabled or small-screened or whoever, it may be a good idea just from a legal standpoint to consider those populations (I certainly don't expect anyone to get sued for not accommodating 800x600 screens!). As for lazy, that's the only reason I can think of, the only excuse I've found, for why sites like MySpace and Yahoo have such sh*tty, spaghetti-esk, invalid code. Facebook, I have no clue, I've never been to that one, so who knows, that one may be valid, but have you seriously ever looked at the code at just Yahoo main page or their mail page? Have you looked at MySpace pages? (I have as at first, before I knew better, I'd look at pages people'd post here at DP asking for help...) There is really no excuse for that, other than "We don't know what we're doing" or "we don't care." Either one of those could be fixed with decent coders who know what's valid, semantic, and will spend the time to do it right. So, I assume laziness. After all, those site work "good enough" for "average users with IE and FF". For many businesses, unfortunately, that's enough. camp185 (even if you don't read this), I apologise if I sounded like an attack dog, that was not the point-- at least you think of usability; many developers don't. And thanks for the link. I actually disagree with looking at the most-popular resolutions anyway (don't any of those PhD's resize their browser window so they can surf and do other stuff at the same time??) but it's still a nice read (at least so far as I've gotten, damn that's huge... truly a "book"!).