So what screen size should you design for? It used to be 800 x 600 pixels. I have noticed that the percentage of visitors with an 800 x 600 pixel display has been decreasing from 13.4% in December 2005 to 5.28% in November 2007. When does it make sense to start optimizing for higher resolutions? best regards wiz
Oh my God. I can't believe this topic has reared its ugly head again (nothing against you, Wizard). Allow me to put this beast down before anyone else gets any stupid ideas and says that 800x600 should be ignored for most Web sites. Take a deep breath, and repeat after me: Screen Resolution Is Meaningless. And here's why. Just because John Doe has his screen resolution set to 1600x1200 doesn't mean that he's going to be using all of it to visit your site. He may have the browser open to about 800x600 (or thereabouts) so he can see other programs, such as Trillian or another chat manager. If you want more information (and I'm sure you do), please read The Definitive FAQ on Screen Resolution by Simon Pieters over at SitePoint.
wizardofx: I'm making templates for resolution 1024×768 or bigger. I think that people with 800×600 are 1) PC beginners with bad hardware and 0% chance to monetize them 2) testers - they simply switch to lower resolution for testing purposes... Dan Schulz: You're right but only if user has bigger resolution (at least 1280×xxx) because if you have something like 1024×768 or even 800×600 you simply can't have smaller browser's window... On today's sites it such a lot of informations which disallow you to have smaller window then 1024×768... It's just my opinion, you can kill me for it but...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Optimizing for any single resolution is a total /FAIL/. PERIOD. It is more the province of pixel perfect art ***s and lazy coders than it is proper use of what is available to us. Hard to say what's worse, sites that show up as crappy little stripes down the middle of my workstation screen, sites that don't fit well in Opera Mini or DS, sites that don't fit into the screen on my 600x400 windows mobile device, or sites that on my laptop don't let me see the whole page width when I shrink the browser from 1024 to 800 or less so I can see my chat client. Fixed resolution to me is much akin to Gen. George S. Patton Jr's opinion of fixed fortifications.
And what about older people with newer hardware that have their screen resolution set to 800x600 so they can actually see what's going on? I won't kill you for it, but you're still wrong. I'm running my backup monitor right now at 1024x768 on a 14" CRT monitor - sometimes I'll have my browser window set to 800x600 so I can see my Trillian contact list as well as a few "choice" IM conversations that are going on. I also have my task bar minimized when it's not being used. If you haven't, I strongly suggest you read Simon's screen resolution FAQ and realize that you as the designer have no control over how your Web site is displayed - you can only influence it. Afterall, at the end of the day, it's the user who has the final say, not you (or me).
I don't code for any resolution. As Dan is saying it's useless. Not everyone will have their browser set to full screen, actully I know a lot of people who don't because they keep msn or whatever open on one side of the sceen too. This is why liquid pages are liked so much by people, they (can) cope with any browser size. I say can because you wouldn't want someone viewing your website at browser size of 100x300 or something stupid like that would you? Even a liquid layout wouldn't look good like that.
Twistedspikes, some mobile users don't have that choice. While newer mobile devices like the iPhone (and I believe Opera Mini as well, but don't quote me on it) can "zoom in" on the page using the screen media stylesheet, not all are capable of doing so. Heck, my cell phone can only display plain HTML.
Yeah, I understand that mobile devices don't. I've not really looked into mobiles much (really should, it's probably the way most people will be looking at the web in the near future). Isn't there a way to create a totally different page for mobile users though? I think I read somewhere that this is how most people do it, a mobile version of their site as well as the normal version.
You're thinking of WAP and WML, two technologies that are quickly becoming obsolete. There's also .mobi which is just a scam as far as I'm concerned.
Given technologies like Opera Mini, Opera mobile, and the various Webkit offshoots - that accessment of WAP and WML is spot on. 15 years ago we were browsing the web with a third the processor that comes in most mobile devices of the past three years - If a 233mhz Pentium 1 could handle it, a 520mhz PXA should kick some serious tuckus. As to .mobi - if it looks like a scam, smells like a scam - it's probably quite popular in the SEO section of these forums.