jtara - 8:48 pm on Sep 8, 2007 (gmt 0)

Well, I missed the discussion on wide screens since I'm not a contributing member (one of these days...) but I'll throw my 2cents in on that - I doubt wide screens matter, because I don't think there's any reason to believe that users will either maximize their browser window or scale it to the same proportions as the screen.

Indeed, I think my OWN tendency, the wider the screen goes, is to make the browser window a bit NARROWER, because on a wide-screen, there is now sufficient space to show another application, screen icons, etc.

On the current topic, I would be interested to know if these statistics confirm my suspicion that

(1) the majority of browser users who do not maximize their browser window prefer a "vertical" aspect ratio, regardless of physical screen width.

(2) wide-screen users are more likely to not maximize their browser window than 4:3 monitor users.

I think we are used to doing most reading in a "portrait" aspect ratio - correspondence paper, books, newspapers, etc. all use this format, and so it is going to be natural for people to choose this format for their browser.