pageoneresults - 2:46 pm on Sep 9, 2007 (gmt 0)

Scrollwheel was the best stepforward for the mouse and websites!

Agreed!

So be honest, viewport size is only important for ad revenue, not for website design in itself.

Ah, but therein lies a problem. Its not just "what you see" that is in the Browser Viewport. Here are a few recent topics that all tie in with this...

Developing Effective META Description Elements
[webmasterworld.com...]

SOC - Source Ordered Content
[webmasterworld.com...]

And two other topics that are a bit older but also come into the equation...

Inverted Pyramid Writing
[webmasterworld.com...]

How Do Search Engine Robots Work?
[webmasterworld.com...]

Now, back to these Browser Viewport Statistics. Why don't we have them? Is it because the amount of data to capture is a bit much? Why don't the analytics programs out there offer this type of granular data? What gives?

Here we've been discussing screen resolutions when the fact of the matter is that is the wrong metric. Especially if it dictates website design. Screen Resolution as a metric should be deprecated. I'm guilty of using it myself as that was what the topics are usually centered around. Can anyone give me a good reason why we haven't been focused on the viewport instead?

In regards to capturing data, we also put in an onload event to make sure we capture the true viewport size in addition to their settings on first visit to the page.

<added> I do see that some analytics programs track browser width and height. Most popular browser width for 2007 August? 1000-1499. Most popular browser height for 2007 August? 550-599 with 600-649 not far behind. Also nipping at that second popular height spot is 800-899.