What screen resolution should I design for?

[orangeena]

I have this ongoing argument with one of the developers at work.

He has insisted (for going on 5 years now) that the most common screen resolution that people use is 600x800. I'm sure he was right 5 years ago, but today, I think 1024x768 has to be more common.

I know it depends on audience, too. We typically target the employees of big investment houses, stock brokerage firms, large banks, etc. If I were designing for bank customers and the etrade crowd, it might be a different story, but we target the firms themselves...and I'm reasonably sure that morgan stanley bought new monitors in this millenium...

Am I completely off-base? Is he?

We have a lunch riding on this one. hehe.

[JPnyc]

The most common is now 1024x768. Roughly 2 to 1 over 800x600

[jlknauff]

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

[chris_bcn]

I still design to 800x600. You can't ignore them - they're a small % but still significant in actual numbers. It depends on your server stats ultimately though. BUt I try to ensure that all my sites are viewable and usable, whether you're using a text browser, screen reader, 800x600 etc.

[typographics]

id stick with 800x600.

[EC]

my v2 website that's in the works will be designed for 1024x768. 'Cause I don't want to work with clients that have 800x600 resolutions. lol

[fyred1]

Yeah, it BLOWS but it's true. 800x600 still has enough users to make it better to consider a layout that will work in both resolutions. This won't change. Soon resolutions will go even higher. Mine is set at 1280x1024 (19" ViewSonic) on my main desktop. All of the others (5), including my iMac and laptop, are at 1024x768.

[panzer]

fyred is much righto

not weanting to work woith clients

wow you must be in a cool position dude

the client is the boss ?

[chris_bcn]

It's not just that people have monitors set to 800x600 - by designing to 1024x768 you are making an (often incorrect) assumption that the user is viewing your page with a maximised broswer.

Lots of people have hig res monitors, but will have the browser window set to around 800x600 to maximise screen real estate.

[EC]

fyred is much righto

not weanting to work woith clients

wow you must be in a cool position dude

the client is the boss ?


That comment was sort of cheek-in-tongue. The layout I am using now is designed for 1024x786 but I only have "non-essential" content outside of the 800x600 area. For a client, I would never NOT consider the 800x600 crowd unless they specifically require that I do (which has never happened). When my clients have wanted a wider view, I have always opted for a liquid layout.

[JPnyc]

Personally I think a site should fill the screen at any res. but that might be just me.

[EC]

Personally I think a site should fill the screen at any res. but that might be just me.

It's nice, but hard to do when you're dealing with fixed-width graphics.

[ecsyle]

800 x 600. I never maximize my browser window. Scrolling to the side sucks. Reading long horizontal lines of text sucks.

[chris_bcn]

I agree ^^ - once all browsers respect min and max-width and we can keep line length to a sensible level then fluid will be a much better option.

I personally don't like fluid sites as I DO maximise my window frequently and on even 1280x768 the line length on fluid sites can run way too long. Makes it unreadable for me

[JPnyc]

To each his own then. Truncated sites bug me. My res. is 1152 on a 20" monitor and 800 width sites just seem so incomplete. I can't imagine what they must look like to a 1600 user.

[chris_bcn]

indeed - but statistacally there are very few 1600 users. There are far more 800 ones. I firmly believe in designing something that is usable to as wide a cross section as possible. I don't mind havin wee scroll bars at 800x600 as long as it doesn't hide any (important) information

[JPnyc]

I don't mind that either, in fact some of our sites do show a small scroll for 800 users. But everything is progressing on the web. We're moving toward larger res. and toward broadband connections as the standards. Sites are designed much with dialup users in mind, anymore.