Most common screen resolution these days

which is the most popular for the general public?

[kapow]

Screen resolution 1024x768 vs 800x600 (and others).
I don't want to know which res everyone thinks is best, I would really like to know which is the most popular for the public. I try to make my websites work well in both of the above. But it helps to know which is most common.

Is there a website with stats showing screen resolution settings rather like those sources of info that show browser popularity?

Or - what is your experience of non-technical folk? Which screen res do they tend to have?

[JonB]

do you use % or pixels in tables etc? Using % is good idea. i use 800*600

(edited by: JonB at 6:20 pm (utc) on Jan. 17, 2002)

[Marshall]

kapow,

My guess is that most popular resolution is still 800x600 merely because that's generally the default setting. Even when I bough my 21" monitor, it was set to 800. However, if people do resize, I suspect 1024 x768 as 1280 can tend to make things rather small.

[tedster]

Most statistics I've seen show a big jump for 1024 over the last year or so. Here are some statistics [w3schools.com] that show 51% at 800 and 42% at 1024.

(edited by: tedster at 7:34 pm (utc) on Jan. 17, 2002)

[rcjordan]

Here's the xtreme-dm data from a travel-related page with 3/4Million uniques over the 15 months ending in Oct 2001. Being extreme (javascript), it's rough data, but still gives an idea. If I can find a recent snapshot, I'll see if it's changed much.

Screen Resolutions Unique Visitors Percentage

800x600 412205 61.18%

1024x768 153079 22.72%

640x480 74592 11.07%

Other 12682 1.88%

1280x1024 10225 1.51%

1152x864 9483 1.40%

1600x1200 1474 0.21%

---

<added>
Here's a real estate page (still xtreme) that's been tracking for just the last 7 months. Though it's a much small sampling, you can still see the shift away from 640.

800x600 4645 61.91%

1024x768 1870 24.92%

640x480 577 7.69%

Other 169 2.25%

1152x864 117 1.55%

1280x1024 114 1.51%

1600x1200 10 0.13%

[IanKelley]

It's too bad that 640x480 seems to still be above 5%... I quit designing for it 6 months ago. :-)

After all, new computers have been shipped at at least 800x600 for over a year (probably longer) and even on a 15" monitor 800x600 is more than readable (even for the old folk).

I figure anyone at 640 width resolution is either using a HPC or doesn't know they can change it. What we really need is a scripting option once you've detected a 640x480 visitor... "Do you want to change your screen resolution to 800x600?"

[rcjordan]

>640x480 seems to still be above 5%... I quit designing for it 6 months ago.

I expect they're getting used to scrolling right by now.

>script

While I don't bother with visitor reminders and prompts, there are some pretty powerful things you can do with dhtml in this regard. Over the holidays I adapted an image-resizing script to sniff the available screen width and write an additional column if there was wasted space on the right. I haven't actually used it yet, but it definitely has possibilities.

[IanKelley]

I'm with ya... I'd give anything to be able to rely more on DHTML. I could write full fledged, low bandwidth applications instead of websites :-)

The problem, of course, is that it has to be able to degrade... First for multiple browsers and, second, for people with scripting turned off... So you can only use all that power for optional design elements. :-(