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When will 1024x768 Replace 800x600 for Web Design?
Dr.X asks: "It seems as users get bigger and better monitors and video cards, the standard for web resolution is slowly approaching 1024. There is a fairly in depth answer over at Google stating that we are likely to be safe at 800x600 but when will we hit 1024 as the standard. What's Slashdot's opinion?"
Why do web designers still have to target a particular resolution? Back when image scaling sucked (well, it still does) and layout was done with a complex series of pixel-aligned tables, I can see why this was necessary. These days, CSS should allow web developers to scale their site to any resolution, or even any media! (Look at the w3c's CSS recommendations for screen and print media).
Web layou should no longer be done in pixels, period. This will even -look- a lot better, not to mention fit a lot more resolutions, once SVG or similar vector-rendering support is built into browsers. This shouldn't be far off for Mozilla, and IE will have to catch up.
Why does it matter? Just design your site so that it will scale nicely. Web pages don't have to be fixed rectangles like dialog boxes.
-- $G
One thing that should be considered in this debate is the rise of portable or handheld devices. While screens of 320x240 and smaller are a little too small to worry about,I suspect that VGA or 800x600 resolution devices will become more common. Since they are great as web pads it would be wise to consider them in any new web page design
At home I have 1280x960, at work I have everything from 800x600 to 1400x1050. However, I rarely have my browser window wider than 900 pixels. This browser window I'm using right now is 875 pixels wide. When I'm web surfing it is rarely the only thing I'm doing, don't make me use up the whole screen.
the question of whether the user's resolution is 800x600 or 1024x768 is irrelevant. i use 1920x1200 myself, but still keep my browser about the same size as if my monitor were set to 800x600. i just prefer it that way.
that said, what i want to see more of is that websites start to scale with my browser size. if more people used relative dimensions for sites, then i could set my browser to whatever size i want for viewing that site, and it would scale to fill my browser whatever its size may be. that's the onf the things i love about slashdot - it fits my screen be it 640x480 or higher.
however, on that same note, slashdot is still unusable on my PDA. why? because it only fits on 640x480 or bigger.
still, using percentages for widths and ems, exs, or percentages for heights is ideal if you want to maintain layout, because i've found that some users configure their UA to use miniature font sizes and small text areas need to adjust to fit them. so i've also started using relative units for my font size.
but in the case of a PDA, it's better to serve a simpler, smaller style sheet to make those users happy and keep the hits coming.
because, that's what it's all about isn't it? getting hits. nothing else really matters to the web designer.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
I have a fairly recent computer, I may have a bigger screen then 800x600, however I do not browse with the window filling the whole screen, I would hope that web designers (including myself) continue to make well designs that work at a smaller resolution.
I don't know about you, but I've used computers with 640 lately. I know a local library that has computers on 640. It's horrid, but it's there. I think it's a matter of how much you care about compatibility. You will probably lose readers if you use high-res design elements (so I went from 5 readers to 4 on my website), but what I see is simply a cost-benefit analysis to see whether the cost of losing x amount of readers or just inconveniencing them matters to you. Not only does that integer x matter, it matters whether you give a shit about readers. I personally didn't test my webpage...oh well. Here are the numbers quoted:
- 1. 1024 x 768 - 48.3%
- 2. 800 x 600 - 31.7%
- 3. 1280 x 1024 - 13.6%
- 4. 1152 x 864 - 4%
- 5. 640 x 480 - 1%
- 6. 1600 x 1200 - 1%
- 7. 1152 x 870 - 0.2%
Our site was designed for 1024x768, this site is running since January; the stats are since the end of March. It's a webshop (computer hardware) in the Netherlands. Numbers were found using a hidden frame that posts a form with values filled in by a bit of javascript.
Of course, designing for a fixed resolution is bad, should always look good, yadda yadda... It'll work on lower resolutions but you may have to scroll sideways now and then.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I would personally escort the idiots who have splash pages to their own corner of hell. Numerous times I go to sites and get a blank page. It turns out they decide that there is *no* way I can possibly experience their site without having both Javascript and Flash turned on. You see they use the Javascript to run the Flash. (I have a proxy that kills nosey javascripts). Feel free to do that in the depths of your site where Flash may be appropriate but preventing entry to the very front page is idiotic.
The other thing I detest is sites that decide how many pixels everything should be. I run Mozilla maximized to 1600x1200 on a 21" monitor. Numerous sites think I can read text a few pixels high. I can't. I turned on the Mozilla preference that lets me enforce the minimum point size.
Even the Google Answers site linked to screws it up. Their horizontal ad bar at the top gets vertically truncated since they decided to allocate a fixed number of pixels to it. Other sites have borders around the article as a fixed length and so I get articles abruptly terminating and have to drag the mouse on the text to see what is below the end of the arbitrary bottom border.
As everyone else says in these comments, stop trying to control stuff to pixels and instead specify the big picture for the layout. If you have to ask the question about what the best viewed size is, then your design is badly broken.
Do not fix your web pages to a specific resolution. I hate those idiots, who think that world rotates around 1024x768 monitors. I'm surfing web with different kinds of devices and browsers (WAP browsers, text-only browsers, Avant Go etc.) and it pisses me off when I hit the page which can't scale correctly to my browser.
Content is what matters, not fixed-sized cool-looking layout (you know, it's possible to make nice looking, functional web sites with scalable layout).
I've noticed that the most notorious misusers of fixed layout are designers, who have used to design magazines. Apparently there is not enough education about web designing at art schools even nowadays.
Gamers generally have better gfx cards, and monitors - hence are more able to handle a larger res.
It's just as much a question of:
- when PHB's stop being paranoid about not reaching 0.2% of their possible clients
- when web designers start thinking out of the box, quite literally
Technically, pages can be made to scale, but it is not perfect. What is missing is the option to scale to a certain width and then stop. I usually have my browser about 1100-1200pixels wide when surfing. At 1600, scalable sites seem to wither. A design for a certain width (be it 800 or 1600) may technically scale, aestetically it won't. I haven't found a solution for it either, except to limit the width. There's no css for scale to 1200 and fix it at wider screens.
the pun is mightier than the sword
2 things happen:
1) when whomever the dominant EU (end user %User_joke) OS ( %Lame_MS_comment) ships driver that default to something higher than 1024x768
2) when the bell curve 60% norm can can display said higher resolution at 72DPI (not everone can read text 6 pt text at 96dpi mangled by 1600x1200 displays {what i run my display at (NEC/Mitsu Diamond 19") and to me it looks quite nice but everyone who comes by complains that they cant read the screen}
3) thing (yeah I know I said 2) when the most common browser can actually start rendering CSS anywhere close to correctly and/or ignore what it doesnt do correctly instead of breaking things.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
I don't know about "the majority of users" but my screen resolution has increased quite a bit over the years (800x600 to 1024x768 to 1152x864 to 1280x1024) while the sizes of the windows (especially browser windows) I use have remained relatively constant. The size of the browser window I'm most comfortable with is around 1000x750. If it gets larger I have trouble following a line of text from one side of the window to the other.
My OS has this very advanced thing called a "windowing system" that allows me to have multiple windows visible on screen (partially) behind one another. And no window needs to be full screen! In fact, most are smaller! So why on earth should designers relate the design of their website to the resolution of the entire monitor? Make something that scales to fit the window size your visitors use and leave it at that.
[rant]
Slightly related to the "what size should you design for" discussion are the abominations that are webpages that try to fit the window size to the size of their design. I'd like to see webdesigners that include such offensive resizing in their sites to be strapped to a rack that resizes them to every room they enter.
[/rant]
One of my most important clients have been at 1024+ for some (7+) years, however they also have machines accessing at 640 and 800.
Worse yet most of the high resolution machines are stuck at Netscape 4.7 and color depth of 256.
We decided years ago to fore go glitz for operability, design from the start for backward compatibility and we've done some nice looking stuff that has stood the test of time.
Flash, Java-apps and the like are blocks that have to be replaced and don't work for everyone.
Designing for 800 or less means that screens should less likely to become over saturated with 'content' and hence easier to read on a screen.
The answer is to know you audience and be smart (not clever) about who you think you can discard.
Some fool slapped me up and locked my browser the other day for having javascript enabled while visiting his site, not even giving me contact information. Eventually after 1 1/2 hours of phone calls I got it, and his boss, and access restored for the paying customers of the company.
Be careful the web is a communications medium, not a game console (parts of the net and web can be, but the standard is communications).
I'm getting a bit older now and my vision isn't what it used to be. In the past, I would use at least 1024x768, but now I find myself using 800x600 simply because it's easier on the eyes.
It also depends on the most common size of the display device being used. You'd be surprised how many people are still using 15inch monitors.
So, who is your audience? If you expect a large number of viewers to be over 30, I would stick with 800x600.
Having standardized sizes matters to develop a universally usable site. It's not just a marketing ploy; in many cases, it's a legal requirement. Before you complain about how little it matters and demand that people be flexible, consider the following:
First, a site must be attractive. You may be a purist who still thinks that pretty pictures and good design isn't necessary if you present enough information, but you'd be wrong. Unfortunately, people still judge things by their looks. Even if you've presented your information in such a way as to make it extraordinarily easy to use and navigate, many people will never know that. Often, they'll see that your site looks like crap and figure your business is run the same way. Imagine yourself in the lobby of a company you're considering doing business with. Sure, the walls are sound and the furniture doesn't have holes in it. But if everything is cheap white plastic and particleboard, you're going to wonder if this company isn't just some fly-by-night operation. Thus, having an attractive site is important.
Second, the World Wide Web Consortium has very specific requirements for a page to be "usable". What happens if you don't do it there way? Well, you can be sued, for one thing. Also, your company will not be allowed to do business with the government, as you are most likely not in compliance with section 508, the same series of regulations that require wheelchair access, braille, and other accessibility assists for those with disabilities.
Third, you've got to make your site usable. Usability is not the same as accessibility. A 100% accessible site can be 99% unusable if it isn't clear what a user should do, how they should navigate, etc. Just because you've got braille on all of your stairways doesn't mean your users will know what floor to hit if you don't have a building directory somewhere, easy to find and easy to read. As such, it's important to make sure any idiot can navigate your site with ease. Do user testing. Record the sessions. Don't focus so much on what your users say, so much as what they do. I once had a user try to click on something that wasn't a link (but that could have been), then tell me he "should've known better"... but he didn't. (Naturally, it was a link an hour later.) ;-)
Once you've established that your site has to be cleanly and professionally designed, accessible and usable, you now have to make sure none of these elements breaks as you move from machine to machine, browser to browser, and platform to platform. You'll quickly notice that suddenly, you can't make your site scale as much as you want. You see that smoothly-flowing text on a 800x600 screen looks hopelessly cluttered on a 640x480 screen and ridiculously wide, yet short on a 1024x768 screen. You begin to develop visual guides that will work with lower monitor resolutions, yet still look professional on the larger screens. Your designers produce a style guide that begins to define specific column widths and template sizes. And you notice... that the web really isn't as scalable as you thought it was.
What the standard is matters because, if you want to be taken seriously or treated professionally, you had damn well make sure that your site is attractive, accessible, and usable. If not, you'll watch all of your competition march on by, taking your audience with it, regardless of whether you're out to make money or not. If your audience sees that someone else offers the same thing you do, but it's nicer and easier to use, they're going to go see that someone else, and that will be that. You had better take into account what resolutions your users have at their disposal, or your sites will cease to exist.
nb. this is totally my personal opinion
:( sometimes i even have to switch the resolutions to see anything at all.
at first, a site with a good design can pretty well scale from 1024x768 upwards without any minor deflections if the designer of the site has done a good job and the html monkeys have built it up right. usual layouts scale pretty well (for example slashdot itself).
the most important thing about choosing the right sizes for images and frames ofcourse depends from the audience. if you are planning a gaming site for quake3 fanatics you can be pretty sure that they don't expect anything less than 1024x768 and up.
if you are building a site for grandmothers and grandfathers who still use a 15" screen or a site meant to be used from public internet access points like libraries of universitys, you definetly need to scale down.
if you are creating an attractive site which should get money from some kind of sponsors who hope to sell stuff with the help of your site, you have to consider that people who would be rich enough to buy stuff from your sponsors can almost certainly buy themselves a screen of 1024x768. ofcourse it would be nice to show stuff to poor people who can't afford big screens, but if they are not your "expected audience" then why should you give a tiny little webpage in the topleft corner of the screen to the main audience that you expect ? just because some granny refuses to buy herself a 17" normal crt display ?
I personally am very mad at sites that contain a lot of data but since they were designed by poor designers and built for screen like 800x600 it's a hell to read them in the top left corner of your screen
If you expect your site to be around after 5 years from now, i'd suggest to go at least for 1024x768. otherwise you'll be "deprecated".
atm. i for an example am sitting behind a 1280x1024@85Hz screen and i don't even consider myself rich in any dimension.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
Most issues related to web page scaling are related to font size rather then screen resolution. For example I have a high resolution, but also a big font in maximised windows so I can read it ok.
Web designers tell me of course it wont look good in that font size, use this smaller one, but then its unreadable for me.
As more cell phones become web enabled there will be a push for web developers to design pages that cater to those consumers. how we will do that is any body's guess however I think that a lot of browser detection with a dynamic back end will be popular. Opera has a great cell browser that does a wonderful job of making most pages that I visit small screen compatible. but I think that users will push for more as the technology develops.
thats MHO.
What most people refer to as a 'minimum' resolution is really a fixed resolution.
There are valid and reasonable cases for choosing a 'minimum' resolution, expecially when you are designing web apps or intranet apps that would be too awkward to use efficiently if you didn't have the on screen real estate.
However, the reason most people use a 'minimum' resolution is that they do not have the skills to make sites that can scale easily so they choose a size that they can work with. Because they don't scale, then they stay the same size no matter what the window size is. How many sites have you been to where, when you maximise the window, the content is only on the left 2/3 of the screen??
These are 'Fixed' resolution sites, not 'minimum'. And we will be stuck with them until these alleged developers actually learn how and why they should use the available technologies (CSS, JavaScript, etc). Stop accepting their 'excuses' for not using them, check if they are making these decisions because they aren't qualified enough to make the call.
I like to multi-task... that means having several windows contents visible at the same time. I hate it when poorly designed sites force me to "maximize"/"zoom" the window to full screen just to be able to use it's contents... You're not really multitasking with maximized windows, your computer may be, but you are not.
As screens grow, windows do not. Instead, people are having multiple windows open side by side at the same time.
For example, my desktop is 2560 pixel wide and 1024 pixel high - two Flexscan L557 in Xinerama mode. You will not see me running programs full screen, not even full monitor most of the time. People having 1600x1200 are more likely to have two 800x1200 windows side by side than running one window 1600x1200.
Build resizing pages, do not assume full screen windows, and do not even ask for screen resolutions.
I have not used anything less than 1024x768 in 5+ years.
Often i use 1280x1024 or 1600x1200, or 1280x854 on my PowerBook.
If I use 1024x768 its because i am using a crappy ass LCD (not laptop one) where 1024x768 is its max resolution and I wish i could go higher.
Who the hell uses 800x600 these days? Slashdot looks awful in 800x600, as do alot of websites. If people are still using 800x600 they are still probably running Windows 95 and some ancient browser so they won't see your website anyway.
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I have a lot of clients whose default browser/printer setups put out about 720 pixels wide on an 8.5"x11" page, portrait mode. They want to be able to print out reports and whatnot out of straight HTML and get them on a single page wide, with antiquated versions of IE and Netscape, without touching their printer margins, without paying for custom report generation in Adobe Acrobat.
Don't preach at me to change their browsers. These are companies with users all over the world who send me trouble tickets asking why IE prints headers and footers on their pages. Lovely.
What's your damage, Heather?
There are still LOT's of users (specially on companies) who use 800x600 resollutions, and that will be the standard until nobody uses that...
Mind Booster Noori
HTML is not page layout
HTML is not page layout
and, most importantly...
HTML is not page layout.
w3schools.com have a page where they keep a up-to-date stats on the resolutions of browsers visiting their pages. 47% use 1024x768 against 37% running 800x600 (as of January this year)
Probably slightly skewed, but interesting non-the-less.
The page also shows browser usage stats, and whether javascript is enabled or not (92% yes).
You'll get the page here
T.
... that having to use horizontal scrolling may actually be part of the base state of the Universe!
:(
:) ) texts on all shapes and size of displays.
Back in the dark ages, when a web was something you cleaned out of a server case, and the internet was a new fangled name for the Arpanet I remember the 'joy' of getting textual information from the net. We had a couple of formats ranging from text, all the way through wordstar, troff and TeX, all having to be saved and/or extracted before we could even attempt to read them.
Back then the output was text and it almost always was too wide for the terminal you were reading from
Then came HTML! The sun had risen and there was a nice tidy and portable way of documenting that could be read without the risk RSI, tunnel vision and seized neck muscles. Nerds, geeks and other fellow sad cases rejoiced, were happy and read (when reading was still a common skill
Then, slowly, no doubt attracted by the lure of pretty things rather than content the web began the change.
The agents of darkness religiously avoided those pesky things called 'knowledge' & 'skill' and armed with a demonic ability to kill any browser's wish to make text readable, theyinfiltrated the ranks of 'Web Developers'.
The old ways came back and horizontal scrolling returned. Darkness has again returned...
What is the resolution of a text-to-speech screenreader program?
I run at 1600x1200, but when I surf the web, the window is NEVER maximized, but rather sized down to about 800x600. If things were reset to 1024x768, I know a lot of people like me would not be happy to be forced to make their browser take up a bigger chunk of their desktop. Designers should really make their stuff look good in any resolution is my opinion.
I fully concur with many points made so far, both with the "Pro Standards" and the "Pro Designer" groups. Really it's a matter of pragmatism. All websites are designed with a purpose in mind. The real measure if success is not whether the site adheres to the standards, or whether the site is aesthetically innovative. Hardly. Does the site do what it was intended to do? Then it's a success, and all the arguments can go jump out of the window. What I have seen in the threads is a battle between "techies" and "artists". But the fact remains, and my professional experience has taught me, that we need each other. One person commented that is it rare to find a programmer (who knows the standards) who is also an artist. "Artists" weep and mock at sites made by programmers alone. Why? Because they lack imagination, vibrancy, and visual appeal, they use Times New Roman to excess, the sites are allowed to stretch to the point that scientifically calculated typographic rules about readbility are broken (note: readability and legibility are two different things - how many "techies" knew that?). "Techies" weep and mock at sites made by designers only. Why? Because they put form before standards, they put prettiness as their first aim and engineering last. They restrict and hold back on resolution because they think it looks good, and force you to "waste" most of your screen size and Standards are utterly unknown to them, (if dreamweaver don't do it, the designer won't produce it). The fact is that good web design requires adherence to many standards, only a fraction of which are covered by W3C. There are rules to visual appearance, layout, typography (readbility, legibility, meaning etc...), colour, photography, information heirarchy, semantics, the list goes on and on and on... Do the "techies" even know what an artist or designer means by each of those things? While the designer - alone - almost never produces the perfect site (to W3C standards), does the programmer - alone - produce the mainstream consumer marketable site more frequently? I think not. We need to expand our view of the web world. No one group has ever got it completely right. To win takes co-operation. I take the analogy of motor engineering. It's a good analogy, because it is about producing a consumer product that requires both aesthetic and technical excellence. The team involves many different kinds of expert, each highly qualified in their field, but no one expert can style, design, build, test destrucively, test non-destructively, ammend the style and design, rebuild, then advertise and market the product. It takes team work, and that requires respect between team members. I wold suggest it is the same with wb design. Each team member is vital, each skill cannot be done without. At the end of the day both "artists" and "techies" come under the business thumb, so what becomes the right "business" decision, is usually the one that we will all end up going with - which brings us right back to the beginning - the site that achieves it's purpose is the successful one - and all the arguments can jump out the window.
or laptops, which cannot be upgraded
As a web developer that has slowly come around to the fixed width web site, I can give a couple of reasons why it is a good thing.
1) Consistency. There are a myriad of different environments that your site will have to function in. Different browsers, different resolutions, different OS. By setting the width, you take _some_ of the guess work out which allows you to have a better idea what the user will see and make sure that she sees the best looking and most easy to use site possible. Fluid sites have the disadvantage of being displayed on large screens that can stretch your easily readible paragraph into a single leviathon line.
2) The other reason is not so much a user friendly matter, that's covered in item 1, but a development cost factor. Remember web sites cost real money. While fluid sites sound easy, getting them to look the same in every browser etc is not easy, even with CSS. Fixed width sites are much easier to produce quickly with CSS, and using CSS allows us to address that other thing people are complaining about here: little screens.
For those that gripe about viewing my 760px wide site on their PDA or phone. I can pretty much guarantee that you won't be able to use any site designed for the "big screen" on your tiny screens. What is needed is for site layout to be controlled through style sheets which can sense when a PDA is accessing the site and apply a different style that minimizes the page to the essentials that a PDA would want. You can change the look of the page entirely by simply chanigng your style sheet and you won't have to mess with the core cod of your page.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Even $*&%&* IT people who should know better don't change the default of 800x600, even if it's on a ^*%* high-end flat-screen that only looks good at 1280x1024.
And they ALWAYS leave it in 16-bit color.
This is at both of the IT jobs I've had.
What the %*&^ is up with that?
Gaphic designers just use computer editing tools to draw on a paper through a printing device. They love fixed measures, WYSIWYG, aligning pixels, and measuring things in milimeters.
This is all useless for web design. Webpages are designed to be seen (primarily) on a screen and this destroys the graphic designers' basic concepts and techniques.
I don't see any reason to make a webpage not scale because all the HTML rendering is made to do so. This is part of the macromedia flash's success, it gives a fixed size canvas for the designer to "be creative" and they love livig inside boxes.
Every time I see a big budget site use a fixed width page or even a fixed width and height page I feel they never went on learning after getting their designer's degree.
And many web developpers that are techically literate and knwow better are under the orders of these desingers that only know the paper world.
That's ×, you idiots. IDIOTS!!
1024×768!!
1024×768!!
1024×768!!!!
This pubic service announcement brought to you by weks.
\@o@/
As far as I can see, 90% of the problems with the way Web pages are designed comes from the code generated by the common tools.
The <a href="#" javascript="bla...."> stupidity, the "<table width=600" and suchlike fixed width items, all seem to be commonplace in code from things like Dreamweaver and such. Perhaps those programs can generate proper code, but it would seem the default settings don't (IANAWebDesigner).
If the companies that made the tools would just design the tools to generate proper HTML, that works on different resolutions and font sizes, that degrades gracefully when Javascript is turned off, and MAKE THAT THE DEFAULT SETTING, then a great deal of the problems would go away.
You should see my userContent.css file - it is full of overrides to prevent stupid web sites from using 400 pixel wide tables on my 1600 wide web browser.
I've worked with many UI designers - most of whom have the idea that they want to control everything to the pixel level. Then I take the mouse and attempt to resize their window. Either the window won't resize (they've blocked the message) or the window looks like crap. Designing ANY UI that will resize is HARD - you the designer have to convey to the program, somehow, that *this* item should grow, but *that* item should not. That is extra information that many lazy UI designers don't pass along - be they designing UIs for programs or for web sites.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Most GUI applications running on MS Windows or
X Windows are not smoothly scalable in the sense
that when changing monitor resolution the window
elements like buttons, scrollbars, icons, fonts,
etc., do not preserve the whole appearance, each
element scales independently of the others. Is it
possible to make a smoothly scalable interface that
maintains consistency at all display resolutions?
Just because I'm running a high screen resolution doesn't mean that I'm running my browser at full screen. I happen to like 1024x768 on my tiny 15" screen at work and I don't want to have to maximize just to see everything. Also, these are windows so they can be any size. If I want to make my browser 865x550, I can do that. The website should adjust to my window size, not the other way around.
If you design your site utilising non-pixel based measurements (mm, pts or relative such as %) then they will scale to the appropriate size that best fits the resolution of the target browser and platform.
And before everyone starts going on about images not scaling, I would strongly recommend that you read alistapart's article on Elastic Design, and check out the Demonstration page. Resize the text and watch the whole site scale...
The only Good System is a Sound System
you insensitive clod!
Man... I run at 1600 x 1200 on a 17" sony trinitron monitor and can't wait to pick up a nice 21" viewsonic and run higher rez... Granted it is a pain when I visit web sites that insist on using tiny fonts, although I did see a really cool flash site that scaled everything to fit into whatever window you had opened, and I could read it great even when I had it scaled down small... I do a tonne of 3D work and I love my real estate. At work I am on three 21" viewsonics maxed out at 1900 x 1600 and always use all three for one application. Granted I have a system that can handle it and I am not losing my eye sight just yet...
On the other hand, my mother has difficulty seeing, due to cataracs, and she browses and does banking on a 800 X 600 laptop. So for private use hi res is something you set for web space the lowest common denominator is your best bet.
I am sure within a few years we will have higer res as standard, but again as more boomers lose their sight, sites with easier to read text will do better. I can see a standard of higher res but then we will all have to use H1 for paragraph text.
flinging poop since 1969
does google have screen resolution statistics ? That would help a LOT.
Also, many mentioned scalable CSS and such. Are there any good tutorials how to make a scalable webpage ? I tried some time ago (a year) and relative positioning was a APIN (different web for IE and gecko browsers, broken images and all).
Go grab those torrents.
The beautiful part of CSS is that it allows you to use mathematics to scale. If I want the font size to be proportional to the screen size (for example, 10px at 1024x768 - 8px on 800x600), I can just use something like: (Yes, I am aware that this will not work, but its just for example purposes only)
and it will scale accordingly.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
is due to their requirements to support multiple platforms and browsers and many legacy browsers. They still generate a text version of the homepage. They even support OS/2 to this day.
How do I know? I used to work for them as their lead HTML developer back in the day, and worked extensive for their website standards.
The main factor holding back the increase to 1024x768 is the fact that so many people have less-than-perfect near vision. Higher resolution shrinks everything, so my parents (for example) consider that a downgrade compared to 800x600. Their computer is capable of 1280x1024, but it becomes unusable (to them) at that resolution.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Designing around a specific resolution is simply BAD practice. Any web developer doing so should be shot. I used to do web development, and we followed some fairly strict guidelines.
A) Absolutely no horizontal scrolling required (this is the closest we got to designing to a resolution--this test was always done at 640x480 with a maximized browser window)
B) Never do any 'under construction' bullshit. If you don't have a page ready, don't link it.
C) Absolutely no flash, java, javascript, or other plugins. I REFUSE to use any sites that are completely flash-based.
D) Proper attention to contrasting colors, as well as keeping colorblindness in mind.
E) Don't specify fonts by name. Not everyone has, or can use, Avant Garde and Dingbats.
F) The page should render reasonably well under text-based browsers such as Lynx and links. It doesn't have to format perfectly (very, very difficult to pull off), but should at least be navigable, with all information visable.
G) Frames shouldn't be used.
H) Forcing a link to open in a new browser window should never be done. IF the user wants it in another window, or another tab, then let them make the choice.
I) Even though I say no Javascript, I'll re-iterate this one. If you design your site to open it's own new window, turn off the button bar, turn off the menus, resize itself, and/or disable right-clicking, go blow your brains out NOW and do the rest of us a favor. Right now. Do not pass go, and please make sure you use hollow-points.
J) The page should render correctly under, minimum, Explorer 3+, Netscape 3+, Opera, Konqueror, Mozilla/Firefox/Galeon, and any other web browser you can get your hands on. It won't always render identically, no matter what you do--but should remain usable, as properly formatted as possible, and fully navigable and visable.
All of the above issues are turning the Web into a mish-mash of unreadable, un-navigable garbage. If enough people refuse to stay on badly designed sites, the sites will die. Eventually, practices will change--hopefully.
I have the problem that I own an 18 inch CRT; I usually run it in 1600x1200 mode. The problem is that a lot of the features of the web images are barely visible, they are so tiny.
Now, I claim that scaling up the image by 2x so that it covers more pixels is the right thing to do in that case- the angle subtended on my eye would be the same on the 1600x1200 mode as in 800x600 mode on the same CRT and the rendered writing around the images would look much better.
I call this 'right sizing'; because it preserves the size of the image.
Ok, sure, the resolution of the image is going to be no better than if I ran at 800x600- but it's still going to look better. The overall user experience is noticeably improved.
Note that right sizing is not a panacea- scaling an image from 800x600 to 1024x768 would look ridiculous for digitally generated images in many cases. Going from 800x600 to 1600x1200 would look fine though.
I just think that we are going to see more of this kind of thing in browsers; since CRT technology is advancing faster than standards are likely to change. I'm wondering when Mozilla will start providing optional scaling up of images to suit the CRT resolution. I'm also wondering whether HTML needs (or has?) some sort of resolution hints to tell browsers how it was supposed to be viewed.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"While I realize that Web pages are primarily an on-screen medium, the problem is when I want to print out a Web page, too often horrible formatting and ultra-wide banner ads cause the text on the right of the page to get cropped in normal "Portrait" mode requiring me to reprint in "Landscape" mode. I'm not saying that you can't move to 1024x768 formatting, just follow standards so that your pages are consistent across a number of resolutions. And please remember that people also print your pages...
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Just follow standards so that your pages nicely scale, and you won't have to worry! A real-world example is that my parents' less-than-stellar eyesight requires that they keep their resolutions much smaller than 1024x768 meaning that pages of larger resolution require left and right scrolling. This not only is a hassle, but some of the intended "design" of the page is lost if the user can't see it all.
Make your page scalable, and you'll have a winner.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I hope that people stick to 800x600. It would be nice if the pages would scale nicely to be displayed on larger screens, but I like to not have to maximize my windows to view web pages. Many laptops are still stuck at 1024x768, and 800x600 designed pages work great on them.
Our biggest problems with our apps and web pages is that we can get by with laying out the pages so that nothing is crowded at 1024x768 (they do dynamically and gracefully resize, but our useability target is for 1024x768 to have adequate workspace and not much scrolling), but we keep running into situations where we have to train or demo our products with older projectors that don't do more than 800x600.
Evidently, as long as the bulb doesn't burn out, most places don't upgrade their projectors.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Most people reading comments like this will either say "Yes, I do that" or freak out and say "My web site has worked for 5 years and there's no way in hell I'm changing it now."
Simple solution: make a list of all the pixel widths, add them up, and divide by 100. Now go through each pixel width and divide by the total from the previous calculations to get a percentage. Plug in the percentage (adding a % sign means the browser sees it as such) and load up the new page on a large monitor (1600x1200). Play with resizing it a lot. Decide if there's anywhere you need to tweak.
Do the same thing for heights, if you really have them.
The only place I see this not working is pages which have a specific, large image as a background for the entire site, and everything is either on top of that image or part of it (an image map). Even there, you can use Flash or SVG, but you really should get over it and just use a solid color or a repeating pattern for a background.
Look at gnu (and my site, for that matter) for an example of the best web design. Make your point with words. Add some images here and there if you need to, but honestly, if your product sucks, users won't stay there just to look at your pretty site design, and if your product rules, people will stay there despite not having anything pretty to look at it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The better question is "When will web designers break the mold of pixel size and start doing good designs with proper technologies so that pages look good on any reasonable device?".
... if I have a PDA with a 4:3 aspect ratio screen I would -love- to be able to tell the browser to scale down the images to emulate a resolution ... in the case of large 4:3 ratio resolutions you wouldn't even need to resample the image to get decent results, just display every nth pixel/row. It wouldn't look great but we might actually be able to see the page done by over-done designs.
Then again, I've been asking that question for about 7 years (94 through 97 were good years for resolution independent pages).
Make the design look good with -no- graphics and minimal tables. Then add the images to spruce it up for those devices that can view the images.
I'm not saying limit yourself to designing to text-based browsers, but there are numerous graphical browsers (PDAs, phones) that work better when the large images are turned off. I have seen many sites that do this well. On the other hand, there are sites like Bioware.com that barely load on a P3-800 with tons of RAM and a 1280x1024 display due to terrible design both with images and tables (I like bioware games, I hate their site).
There is an opportunity here for a PDA browser to help though
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
The standard that you speak of is to design a website to work on any resolution. If you find at some point that your website only works at a particular resolution, then it's more or less a failure as a web site.
Use relative sizes for what they're worth, and stay away from those pixel sizes.
I run at 1280x1024 resolution, but my browser is never much wider than 900px. I cannot stand sites that are coded specifically for 1024 wide, because even though I can technically resize my browser, why should I? I never understood the idea that every window on your screen needs to be maximized to take up the entire viewable area.
Just beacause I have 1024 (or more) pixes to use, does NOT mean my browser is using them all!
Umm, ooooookay...
As a recent Mac convert, (or longtime BSD user, who just happened to switch hardware- take your pick) I've noticed that the mac's multiple window thing is really, really annoying.
Windows annoys me too, with the fact that most apps only really seem to work in Maximized mode- full screen, blah blah blah. I'm having a hard time getting used to all the little windows everywhere, and the fact that trying to sort through all the damn windows is so terribly frustrating. and, when I alt-tab to an app that's minimized, it doesn't maximize itself - I have to go click on it from the Dock. that drives me nuts. so I end up leaving all the windows on the screen, covering each other.
I don't know how big of a monitor you other mac people use, but I have a pretty decent 19" flatscreen @ 1280x1024 resolution- and it doesn't seem NEARLY big enough to actually use more than one window at a time (other than terminal, of course, which unfortunately is slightly too big to tile 9 windows on the screen).
I suppose I need to learn more about the mac's arcane control keys, but more than anything I'd prefer a more normal unix-ish command key setup. oh well. I'm sure someone will tell me how easy it is to do that, but it's not all that obvious to me.
I refuse to believe the mac has some sort of super-uber-wonderful theory of desktop usage, though, and I wish people would stop acting like it. they waste too much damn space with useless brushed-metal stuff (ugly! make it go away!)
on a separate note, pixel oriented "graphic designers" suck. go CSS.
EOM
I couldn't persuade one of our clients to let me remove their splash page.
They mainly wanted my to redesign the old site (the web designer before me was obsessed with flash) and change the colours. Since i didnt have the original, i decided to redesign it in a sensible design, without changing the look and feel.
The new site is an order of mangitude smaller, and scales, and is easy to change.
Took a while though.
Monospaced text. One person's web design is another person's ugly waste of bandwidth.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
You know... Web sites really suck at 1920x1600 resolution. I hate those sites the resize my browser to full screen, then I get this little tiny site in the center. Luckily I have a smart browser that I can turn that off with (Omniweb).
My preferred browser size is 900x1024. Yes, that's 900 wide by 1024 tall. This is not too wide for sites where I get lost from line to line, or not too wide for sites to render correctly. And it's almost a full page high so I can see the whole picture without scrolling.
I also hate sites that don't render correctly because some "webmaster" does not know how to program to the W3C specs. You can't be a "webmaster" if you can't correctly build a site.
Too bad the best overall sites on the net are personal blogs. Even Slashdot needs to be fixed, but I doubt it ever will.
XHTML, XML, CSS, RSS, and PNG images... That's all that's needed for a good site.
The above is not worth reading.
My web site is in a third world country, and 60% of the users still use 800x600 (at least just 1.5% uses 640x480).
No matter how clean its generated code is, it still doesn't help when most of its users have no idea what semantic markup is or how to make flexible page sizes. It might make it easier to do do CSS and HTML editing, but it still gives web designers plenty of rope to hang the users with (and makes it even easier in some ways, like with using absolute positioning and pixel-based sizing and so on).
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
A: Hopefully, never. Actually, optimistically speaking, web designers will realize that they shouldn't even be aiming for or requiring a graphical resolution as not everyone uses a graphical browser.
Helpful links:
People who say "best viewed at/with" obviously don't get the web.
Nathan's blog
When designers have a FLOAT CENTER for css then MAYBE you will get your wish, but till then forget it.
If you want to know the reality of designers being forced to use a fixed resolution is due to advertising. Advertisers are paying for one exact spot on your page and you need to deliver.
Scaling pages work well for some sites but not well for most, take a look at cnn, cnet, yahoo, etc... There is simply too much going on to allow all the elements on all different pages to just fill up to the screen size.
To be clear, I do and continue to build a version for mobile phones etc, but you really have no choice but to fix the resolution or offer 2 different versions to say 800x600 and 1024x768, the latter usually just ends up getting an extra menu bar with a big skyscraper ad inside.
My own personal site scales, but the sites that make the money cannot for the most part afford to scale in the same way due to the previously mentioned advertisers.
On certain sites all you end up with is a lot of white space which looks like crap at 1600x1200 and too congested at 800x600
I agree that resolution is mostly irrelevant. However, the fact that you cannot specify an aspect ratio is a severe limitation that cripples the web standard.
To put the shoe on the other foot, look at the code generated by Slashdot. While the window does flex as the screen is opened wider, Slashdot doesn't even bother with CSS at all. It's a completely table-based layout. I'm not bashing on Slashdot at all, because it does what it needs to do. But I am pointint out that in a real world environment, using the latest techniques is sometimes just not feasible.
If Slashcode were to be completely rewritten so that it generates nice clean XHTML (or XML that is transformed) with CSS, would the time and effort required to make it cutting-edge compliant really be worth it? Taking the idea to other venues, should every desktop appliction written with a series of kluges in C++ be rewritten in Java so it has a more elegant structure?
Things are improving. Web designers are getting better at using CSS. Some of them are still hanging on to their "best viewed using Internet Explorer 6.0" mentality, but those are the same people who would be arguing for homogeneous computing environments if they were LAN administrators. In every field there are people who try to stay informed, and there are those who only change when forced.
It's also important to remember that clients can often dictate to a very large degree the final design. Ask any designer (print or Web) and they'll relate horror stories related to clients who think they know about design, and refuse to listen to professionals. Yes, yes, the designers should walk away in such a situation. But when someone gives you a Dilbertesque task at your job, do you tell them to fuck off, or do you do the task, hoping you can do it in a way that minimizes damage?
Some designers have the luxury of being able to implement their projects with minimal intervention from clients. But those situations are coveted by designers because they are so rare. Just keep that in mind the next time you see a website and start to think it's automatically screwed up because the designer didn't know what they were doing.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There's nothing more obnoxious when a pretentious web designer asks you, in the web page, to change your resolution in order to view their web page.
:)
Like I'm really going to mess up my icons, window placements, and so forth, as well view a non-optimial resolution on my LCD screen, just so I can better experience your badly designed and overly elaborate UI.
End rant
looks good at any resolution.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
err, you know those width attributes can be in percentages, you don't need a static width.
Virtual desktops, for those who don't know, are multiple desktops which are all active on your computer at the same time. You switch between desktops by clicking a pager or pressing a key (e.g. on my linux desktop I use F1-F4 to activate desktops 1-4).
The advantage of virtual desktops is that they let you group programs and switch between them consistently and rapidly. For example, I always put ssh sessions on desktop 1, web pages on desktop 2, mail windows on desktop 3, and programming IDE on desktop 4. Each group of programs is always in the same place every day, and I can switch to whatever I want very quickly. Compare this to the Windows taskbar, where the taskbar icons are never in consistent locations and you have to hunt and peck for the right taskbar icon literally every single time you switch applications.
Even the Mac Expose desktop is less efficient than the simpler alternative of virtual desktops, since it is very difficult under Expose to group applications together and to perform consistent, single-keystroke navigation of applications.
Windows is like one folder on one desk, and Mac is like shifting lots of papers around on one desk. Virtual desktops is like having several desks at hand and switching between them at the touch of a button. The last one is the only paradigm that I would consider truly designed for multi-tasking.
Bad ones are, though. Flash, JScript, DHTML, whatever....if it's done badly, with no thought to those who can't or don't want to wade through it, then it's BAD. Default to a simple graphic, display Flash *only* if Flash is detected. But that doesn't sell to the PHB and marketdroids.
I've seen numerous instances of good ones, though. A nice company logo that appears for a couple of seconds (with the ability to escape out) is fine. THat's a splash page. A 2 minute movie isn't.
I've been designing web pages for quite a while now, and every page scales down to almost 640x480. Click above for an example.
There is absolutely *no* need to stick to a particular resolution. maybe for the design draft, but not for the final web design.
Every problem has a solution, but every solution creates new problems.
How about setting the image size in your CSS according to relative font sizes (em for example)?
That way when people change the font size the images scale. Of course you have to be creative to have a nice looking site no matter how this affects the flow of text around the images.
You obviously have never designed any sort of commercial website. Sure, it's nice to be a preachy, didactic Slashdotter and complain about lack of standards, but a true commercial venture knows that you can't always rely on customers to know what they're doing, you can't rely on any consistency in the technology they use, and you can't rely on smart design to catch the user's eye.
Javascript is not a bad thing at all, but clearly is often used in bad ways. But you don't advocate taking guns away from the police just because they can be bad. It's useful for taking the strain off the server by doing client side validation.
Frames aren't always evil either. In fact, I use Squirrelmail most of the time - a very common PHP based IMAP webmail system, and the whole damn thing is in frames by default. I love it.
Many Slashdotters use Gmail now, and I'd like to point out that it's about 99% javascript based. Doesn't automatically make it bad, does it?
Opening a second window is OFTEN the preferred behavior. Sites that bring up massive search results - like an ebay type site, or an e-commerce site, or even a personals site like match.com, might prefer opening individual windows.
I can agree with some of what you say: no site should be fully plugin based, and that Flash, while cool, is contributing to the deterioration of the internet, and that horizontal scrolling is the work of the devil. But the rest of your points make you sound too much like a propagandized Slashdot standards fanboy who is hip to the latest trends of XML.
Does any one else have trouble viewing these pages in 640x480/16bit-colour? It seems that providers make it as difficult as they can to actually get hold of graphics drivers if one does not already have some!
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
1024x768 will replace 800x600 when win9x based OSs vanish. IMO things never looked decent at above that res on my old box. everything was too small, even with large fonts and such. but it is just right on winxp. dunno why.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It already did somewhere around -95, kiddo
There are typographical considerations--having columns and tables fit to whatever size window a user is using would create problems if the window were very narrow or very wide, as very long or very short lines of text are difficult to read. The text size could be scaled along with width and resolution, but I know of no method that will accomplish this efficiently and will work in a majority of browsers. And then there are graphics, which are not scalable without quality loss. PNG might work, but few use the format for larger graphics like photographs would simply be too large in file size. [It would also be expensive bandwidth-wise for those paying the hosting bill.] It may work well for logos and vector images, but beyond that, there's not much to be done.
you mean it hasn't arleady, geez!!!!!!!!!!!
I often browse with a sliver of an editor visible behind the browser so I can read the info and type. Sometime I like having active windows in the background, or with the useless fringy stuff pushed off of the screen.
Eyes do multitask with the rest of your body -- you can see things out of the corner of your eye, and type without watching your fingers move or the letters pile up on the screen.
Why on earth would yoou want a monitor bigger than one piece of paper? To maybe show two pieces?
CSS is perfec for this application. Movable type is a perfect expample of the technology in action. There pages stay cnentered in browser winsows no matter the size. Its amazing how much technology is available today and how much ignorange big companys have of harnessing this technology.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
That really is annoying. Why don't we just write up an actually useful toolbar that would let you change your display with a touch of a button, or just write it into the normal default toolbar? I honestly have no need for two favorite buttons.
An even better idea would be to make it highly customizable (the complete opposite of Windows add-an-icon customization), to the point where you could set the toolbar buttons to change display size, font size, image display, and the list can go on and on.
For example, you could have a button made for sites with lots of text, another for viewing image heavy sites, and another that fit your person preferences.
First off, I strongly disagree with your position that layout should not ever be done in pixels. What is a percentage if not a percentage of a pixel measurement? Monitors display in pixels. That's our baseline. I was speaking of pixels in the same way that a low-level programmer might speak of gotos. When working in C, gotos should generally be avoided. In assembly however, gotos are everywhere; They are a necessity to get anything done.
When I say someone should code to a particular resolution, I don't mean that people should make pages that only look good in that resolution. What I mean by coding to 800x600 is that I am willing to give a scrollbar to people at 640x480, but the layout should expand to use the available area in higher resolutions.
I also strongly disagree with your position that "everything else should be sized to a percentage of the viewing area." If someone has their browser at 800 pixels wide and you set a side navbar to be 30% of the total (240 pixels wide), this is reasonable for most nav text and info. But if another user has a browser that is set to 1024 pixels wide or more, that navbar starts taking up too much real estate in my opinion. It would be better if the main content area were to expand rather than the navigation bar. Not that I'm saying that you should set pixel values in your CSS mind you. Here is a case where most of the time, a width in em units would be better. That way, differences in user font sizes can be accomodated. Sometimes it's easy, but not always. If it was always easy, 99% of all web pages would be done like this. Unfortunately in the real world, some designs simply aren't that easy.
Take a look at one of my sites. Are you honestly saying that the main nav should be a percentage of the total? Take a look at one of the articles. Aren't you glad that when you expand/contract the browser, the main content is affected much more than the width of the nav?
I'm certainly glad that vitrol wasn't directed at me. I do take issue with you characterization of "idiots." People are free to browse the web as they please. It is our responsibility as webmonkeys to get our message out, not for the "idiots" to conform to us. You are obviously a young, healthy person who does not know what it is like to have horrible eyesight due to genetics, accidents, or simply old age. I myself use a 19" monitor at 1600x1200. I've also seen people with 21" monitors who use 640x480, and I do not begrudge them. Many of these folks did so not from ignorance or idiocy but rather from a standpoint of comfort.
I'm not saying you have to cater to these folks and make sure every design no matter the intended audience or extra time needed fits for absolutely everyone. In fact, if you want to code to maximized 1600x1200 resolutions, so be it. I code to a minimum of 800x600 and get an estimated >95% of desktop users. However, it is not right or justified to call them idiots simply because you would find it unreasonable or uncomfortable to do yourself. I don't mean to come down so hard, but I've had more than a few relatives who have had vision problems. It struck a nerve.
As for pixel sizes for fonts, that's not a simple issu
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.