Is 1024 x 768 the way to go now?

To be honest, I'm sick of designing for 800 x 600. The workspace is so small. However, as there are still some old school people around, I keep on doing it.

Nonetheless, more and more, I see websites that are new and old adopting their designs for the 1024 x 768 resolution.

Is it safe to go that way now?

 

11 % of my visitors use 800X600 screens -- that represents a significant number of users for me. Therefor, I design my pages so that they don't have to scroll horizontally in order to read all of the content.

James

 

And I use 1280x1024, and I dislike looking at tiny fixed layouts.

Thats why you make it fluid - especially for people who resize their browser screens, have many toolbars on the side etc.

 

I like flex better than liquid most of the time, cause I've got sh*t floated around everywhere and it can start to look a little stupid at really small or large window sizes (don't bother with screen resolutions, think about window sizes-- you can't measure what size people set their browser windows so always assume the worst).

So far I've sometimes spent extra time making something still work in 600X800 because I believe it's still a valid screen size. Don't design for that size, just make sure the site is plenty usable at that size. BBC recently redesigned their page and at the smaller size you simply lose a sidear with ads and stuff. Still perfectly usable.

 

I design for 800x600 always as there are still millions still using this resolution. I know it sucks but we must reach to as much of the world as possible. Maybe some education can help these people move with the times.

 

Education alone won't help. There are smaller screens on things like PDAs etc (which are pretty big for the size of those things), company computers stuck with hundreds of older monitors who cannot afford to upgrade, students with cheapo CRTs, etc. And on a 600x800 screen, that little log strip looks pretty big : )

 

My site is for 800x600.

 

I test all of my pages for display and function in current versions of MSIE 6, MSIE 7, Firefox 2, Opera 9, Mozilla 2 and Safari 3 graphical Browsers at 1280 by 1024, 1024 by 768, 800 by 600 resolutions, and small screen rendering mode (PDAs, hand held devices). I also test them for accessibility in textual Browsesr and audio screen readers.

James

 

These days I'm trying to design for 1024x768 but making sure it degrades nicely enough if the user does hit the site with only 800x600

One of my more popular sites which would have a general enough user base shows it as gettin 5% 800x600 ..

 

I normally go fluid because of mobile devices.

 

This has been covered MULTIPLE times here on the forums, and each time it comes up I always tell people to READ The Definitive FAQ on Screen Resolution by Simon Pieters.

Seriously folks, this thing you mistakenly call "Screen Resolution" is MEANINGLESS.