Forum Moderators: phranque
I've noticed that popular sites like Yahoo/YouTube/New York Times and many others are all having resolution sizes greater than 800 pixels in width.
As such, if popular sites like these can broaden their minimum resolution size width wise, and with fewer users going the 800x600 route by the month, I've begun to wonder why I'm still designing sites for this resolution.
I'm giving thought to kicking up the minimum resolution size I use to around 900 pixels wide.
Anyways, was wondering what people think of abandoning the 800x600 resolution? And if you have already done so...what have been your results?
Oh, the site this will be on is a photoblog/blog/travel guide essentially...not a e-commerce site.
Thanks
Jim
his topic always provokes a lively discussion but I believe the decision is quite simple. Depending on your niche there are still between 4% and 20% viewing websites on 800x600 screens. If you can afford to disregard them go right ahead.
For my part, I choose not to.
Exactly the same experience as the OP - i thought why am i still working on 800X600 force of habbit?
For one thing going all of screen gives you a lot more space to work off and it looks much better on the eye. Sure no one wants to risk loss of users but the small percentage that find themselves scrolling left to right will soon be updating their equipment anyway and even if they dont providing your key content is central it shouldnt be much of a problem.
Its about 12% and reducing by my rough calculation and I would say that within 2 yrs tops the entire market will have gone all of screen and more sites will be upgraded along the way so within six months that figure will be even less and more than halved within 12 mths i think.
Im certainly not working now to 800X600 as i would have to change it shortly to keep up with the market
- John
Must admit i think 800X600 died with the Ark!
Realistically it doesn't really matter what you think. The stats tell the story.
For one thing going all of screen gives you a lot more space to work off and it looks much better on the eye.
That is only your preference, not a proven fact and I just happen to disagree. Isn't it best to design for your users rather than what you prefer yourself?
Marcia: I bought a brand new computer a few months ago that came as a package from a major manufacturer, including a flat-screen 17" monitor, which came with a default of 800x60.
Like Dabrowski says, it could be down to the graphics card. Is there one? You will definitely need one, or a built-in graphics chip, which motherboards have had for many years.
Don't forget to turn on ClearType in Windows as well once you're running at the native res. Makes for a huge improvement in my eyes. (Desktop -> right-click -> Properties -> Appearance -> Effects -> 2nd menu down.)
Dabrowski: How old is your laptop? I have one like that used as a door wedge!
Ah it's just a piece of junk really. It had Windows98 on (now upgraded to XP) and was several years old. Celeron 400MHz, 64Mb RAM (upgraded to 160Mb) and a 4Gb HD. Works fine though! And it cost me next to nothing.
cmarshall: Some of these posts, though, I don't even bother to read, because they are too large and chaotic.
You could always narrow the browser window.
Thanks for the link Brett gave you! I set the forum to 60% width - much better!
Lastly, I've used a great free tool over the years called Sizer from brianapps dot net. What this does is make ANY window (even fixed-width dialog boxes!) resizable to a list of set widths. You just right-click on the maximise/minimise button, or the top toolbar if there isn't one, and choose the width you want. The beauty of this is that you can set up common widths, such as 800, 1024 etc. Of course they won't be exactly the same as smaller screens, due to the window edges and smaller scrollbars, but you can allow for that.
The other beauty of this program is that you can set up mutliple windows precisely, eg: one that fits the left half of the screen, and one that fits the right half. Great for working on 2 documents at once. If you try and resize windows manually, it can end up a right mess. In fact I'd go as far as to say Windows is much hampered by the omission of such a tool. I couldn't do without it myself.
about hand held devices and their smaller screen resolutions
Another good point JAB, can anyone provide specs on these?
I know in the olden days of WAP sites usually had a wap.mysite.co.uk address where I image the site would be rewritten for mobiles, but no idea about current technology?
Hester, you voiced an example - the iPhone, could you tell us more?
l had a site with about 1,000,000 uniques a day with 10 at 800x600--- not 10% ... 10 hits. lol. and that was probably me just multiple monitor size tests.
JAB: I will be curious to know (if we are honest!) how many pro among us do cater to cell, palm etc..
or even bother to think about it?
I'll be the first: By market analysis we know that most of our clients' users are at least in the 1024 range.
And we have no requirement for mobile (as of now) although I am thinking about it, but have not done anything positive in that direction yet.
JAB: I will be curious to know (if we are honest!) how many pro among us do cater to cell, palm etc..
or even bother to think about it?
Me, for one.
I just got through learning up on XSLT, so I can adapt a site we're re-doing for cellphones. I plan on using WURFL to determine the cellphone capabilities, then customizing the transforms to meet the needs of the phone.
It works now, but only for more modern/big screen phones. I want to make it available and usable on smaller screens.
That being said, I'm using a <div>-based display for my screen display, and relying on CSS to format the display.
It works so far, but I have a great deal of debugging to do on the CSS. This will take me a week; just for the screen stuff (I can only devote part-time to this Web work). After that, I have the Print and Handheld CSS. And that's just on the main screen transform. After that, I have two or three WML transforms to do. I'll probably have to do one with embedded presentation, and one with an external CSS file. That's just WML 2. WML 1, forget it. The whole thing is embedded.
<grumble>
Anyone who sells you the zeldmanite line of "It's so much easier to program CSS!" is smoking some good stuff.
CSS debugging is every bit as hard as DOM scripting or XHTML. Harder, actually. There is NO WAY that I can expect the designers with whom I'm working to be able to do this stuff. They don't even try. They just hand me a Photoshop file and say "Make it look like this."
</grumble>
Don't mix up screen resolution and display area size. Unless your statistics give you information on the latter, you don't really know how your visitors are using their browser.
I'm not.
doesn't matter... at one point, you just have to design for bigger. or else why design for 800x600 resolution? since the same rule applies (the browser size would conceivably be smaller).
anyway...
all sites here design for the wider width (and honestly... loonnnng heights...way beyond the fold), including the portals which dominate here. So people expect it and used to it. people would actually probably think your site is outdated if you did it at 800x600. heh. ie: NEGATIVE impact.
overall/in general, korean netizens tend to be more "internet savvy" anyway. (no, there isn't a formal study on it... but one could EASILY build and incredibly strong case for it. in fact, its so "obvious" or apparent that it'd be a waste of time and money to do so.)
still, I suppose that's only interesting for people looking to do biz in Korea anyway so... whatever. just an FYI then. :p
[edited by: GrendelKhan_TSU at 2:32 pm (utc) on April 4, 2007]
I've no idea what XSLT or WURFL are. I've never touched cell/palms but saying that I think very few websites would have a use on AND off a mobile device, save things like mapping, yellow pages, etc...
No site I have ever done would be looked at on a mobile.
Hester, you voiced an example - the iPhone, could you tell us more?
The iPhone is revolutionary because it does away with the need for a separate version of your site for cell phones. Imagine your desktop screen reduced to fit a large phone screen, rotated 90 degrees. You then zoom in on any part of the page that interests you. Sure, this will mean not being able to view the whole screen at full size, but it's potentially a groundbreaking approach.
Check out the video demos on Apple's website. I've no idea if this will really work in practice, or prove to be frustrating, but the height of the iPhone's screen should be large enough to read columns of text nicely.
It will completely do away with messing about with XSLT, WAP, and poor versions of existing sites where most of the graphics and styles are thrown away.
Opera have taken a different approach with Opera Mini and managed to resize any site to fit the small screen automatically. Again, no extra work is required by the designer - the software does it all for you. Even on desktops you can try out two features that assist this approach. They are Small Screen preview, which reformats your site to one column and smaller text, as if it were on a cell phone. And Fit To Width, which keeps everything inside the browser window, even when it is narrowed down. No horizontal scrollbars. Try it.
I hope the iPhone approach is the way forward. If so, I also hope all other manufacturers then copy this idea. It will save a lot of extra work for designers!
I hope the iPhone approach is the way forward. If so, I also hope all other manufacturers then copy this idea. It will save a lot of extra work for designers!
Not this designer. ;)
Am I being old-fashioned in thinking that telephones are designed for speech and PCs are designed for vision? Aren't laptops designed as the solution to on the move computing? Telephones are just not suitable for viewing websites effectively. Don't expect an enjoyable experience if you try to do this.
I appreciate that phones can be used for other stuff but they are never going to replace a computer. I will not be doing anything to make my sites compatible with phones in the foreseeable future.
The iPhone seems to have the right approach. PCs have been around for 25 years. Any new technology that wants to use PC technology should adapt to the existing technology, not the other way round.
because it does away with the need for a separate version of your site for cell phones.
Not until the cost goes down, and the speed goes up for cellphone browsing. I have a 3G phone with a big screen, and I think the speed absolutely stinks. It is unbearable browsing even minimal sites.
Unless Apple is running an entire worldwide infrastructure, they'll be using he same system as my Cingular Blackjack, which means that it will be V E R Y , V E R Y , S L O W .
Because of this, I absolutely must develop minimalist versions of the crucial site functions for phones; even if they can handle "real" markup. A Handheld CSS media file that hides half the page doesn't buy you anything for a phone, because it still needs to download the markup before it can be hidden.
I figured this out some time ago.
This is why you need to have something like XSLT to chop up the markup before sending it to the phone.
And yes, I absolutely do have sites that should be made available to phones. For one thing, I do restaurant sites, and their menus, directions and contact information can be sent to cellphones. Their phone numbers, for instance, can be encoded with a special type of URI (WTAI) that allows most phones to save them as contacts; not just dial them.
Now, back to the topic at hand.
Writing flexible, CSS-controlled markup is an important step. So is keeping in mind the simple fact that people don't read wide pages so well, so text shouldn't be displayed in wide blocks. It should be presented in columns, or broken up with things like images or layout techniques.
A good designer can create flexible layouts that can adapt to high resolution screens or low-resolution screens, and still present a usable user experience. I have seen examples of sites on either type of screen that are completely unusable. Screen size has almost nothing to do with that. It is all in how the site was designed.
These are all very practical considerations. There is no "one, true answer." Anyone who preaches one is selling snake oil, and we just need to accept that.
There is also absolutely no substitute for good design, and that is a fact that has been true for all of human history. Technology has not given us a free pass on the need for good design.
That way on a wide screen you can columnise rather than have vertical scrolling.
CSS3 will support columns, but it won't solve the problem of only do it if the screen is wide enough. I don't think, that may change of course.
1. Design for 800x600 until you are happy that the number of people using this format on your website is negligible, (but piss off the limited number of people who see the space at either side of the content as a problem).
2. Design for 100% width making most people happy but pissing off some people (like me) who don't like wide lines of text.
3. Design for some other fixed width and accept that you will piss of all of those who use a lower resolution.
Dead simple. Right? ;)
Re above post ...
I am now thinking about writing a JS that auto columnises content if it's above?px wide?
... only if the user has JS turned on. Can't you just accept that our business is based on too many variables and get back to doing some real work? :)
[edited by: BeeDeeDubbleU at 12:24 pm (utc) on April 5, 2007]
I am now thinking about writing a JS that auto columnises content if it's above?px wide?
That could be very useful. I know that having columnated overflow has been a perennial topic of conversation in the CSS Forum [webmasterworld.com].
Keep us posted.
1) Table row taking remaining height - almost fixed.
2) Container DIV - 100% width & height with padding and scrolling not stretching parent element - fixed.
3) Detection of default font size, any measurement (px, pt, em, etc...) and browser font size adjustment - done.
I'll add auto-columnisation to the list! Anything else that's a common problem? I enjoy coding and welcome the challenges. I will also freely share code to anyone who wants it - providing my name and contact details are left in!
As my site is a blog/photoblog site...and I really wanted three columns...I decided to go with 840 fixed-width. This gives some breathing space between columns while still allowing me to post large photos within the blog content area itself. It will likely upset a few people on the 800x600 browsers...but the layout was just too darn cramped when scaled down to 760 pixels wide.
I didn't use fluid for this layout...as trying to place all the elements within a fluid design was causing me nightmares due to all the photos and the text that wraps around it. I'm also not a huge fan of real wide text areas...I find it is far easier to read text where there are about 10 words per line (sometimes less).
My rule of web design is really simple. Expand the font size five times. If the site's layout starts looking like an overlayout, then go shoot your web designer, and, unless you're feeling extremely forgiving, the cowboy who rode in on it.
Dead simple. Right?
yup. but the way you say makes it seem like its a problem... I just dont' see why that is problem (anymore).
since when has it EVER been possible to make 100% of the people, 100% happy, 100% of the time?
1. Design for 800x600 until you are happy that the number of people using this format on your website is negligible, (but piss off the limited number of people who see the space at either side of the content as a problem).
annoy maybe. but even so, I doubt it will make them NOT come to the site anymore. so you still win. And I assert, they are probably used to it and its minor compared to many annoyances online, that is, might actually NOT actually be pissed off!
Everyone around here are perfectionists...so we worry and get annoyed about this stuff....but many, like my mother for example (who participates in forums, shares pics with friends...yet still double-clicks links, doesn't use a mouse wheel, and generally makes me cringe when I see using a computer), wouldn't bat an eye at a site going beyond browser size.
It just happens too often to annoy. So, its just one of a billion little things about "the internet" she doesn't understand...and therefore just ACCEPTS.
2. Design for 100% width making most people happy but pissing off some people (like me) who don't like wide lines of text.
you said 100% width pisses you off...but WebmasterWorld is 100%, no? (or like 95%) That's my point. You might not like it, buts its good enough, and when you like the site... you come back, make purchases, participate, whatever anyway.
3. Design for some other fixed width and accept that you will piss of all of those who use a lower resolution.
reverse: I question people who still design for 800x600.
Honestly, ask yourself, will doing so make your netizen go "omg! forget this site! I'm finding a better one with smaller fixed widths!". Seriously. It won't.
BUT on the flipside, it makes my job designing or managing or dealing with my site A LOT easier to not worry about 800x600. (like you said, 800x600 is just tooo cramped).
Making it perfect for EVERYONE, is just NOT worth it on the margin. neither is fretting about it. so do what is easier for you, and get back to focusing on good content
consider that I get SERIOUSLY annoyed and causterphobic cause when sites don't resize, and take up a tiny piece of my browser size /monitor resolution (which is higher than average)... thinking, "ARRGGG just let be the size I WANT IT! I don't want to be cramped up in a little box anymore! UPGRADE DANGIT!" And I DO often leave those sites. 0_o;; And I shop and participate A LOT online!
what about us?! +_+
I would argue that its more important to make people happy that are in the majority AND probably more likely the kind of people you want on your site (actually buy stuff and participate online)...ie: NOT 800x600 resolution monitor people.
It would interesting is someone did a study correlating monitor and resolution size with demographics, time, purchases and participation online.
I'd bet money 800x600 are NOT the target market for any site that actually deals with making money or business etc.
I smell a new marketing metric. heh.
you said 100% width pisses you off...but WebmasterWorld is 100%, no?
Yes and some threads are difficult to read in here if the writer does not use lots of white space. But then many forums are 100% wide. This is not a major problem because I am used to being on forums and I expect to see this. Aesthetics are not that important in forums.
Making it perfect for EVERYONE, is just NOT worth it on the margin.
Making it perfect for everyone is impossible. Clearly what we should be doing is ensuring that it is made to suit the majority.
but WebmasterWorld is 100%, no?
No.
Check out this [webmasterworld.com] post.
It's just not so well documented.
True. In fact, it's generally true whenever you're conveying information. And I think people generally understand that.
So what? Well, people who see a site with text driven through procrustean layout limits for reasons of "site aesthetics" ... understand, at some level, that THAT site is NOT about being informative.
And that's a very useful thing to keep in mind, whether you're designing sites for review, or reviewing predesigned sites.
