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?"

Comments

Why is this even necessary?

[reverius]

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.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[mpmansell]

One of the problems is that alleged 'web designers' haven't learned enough to know that such standards exist. Many wouldn't even know what the W3C was.

They will talk about standards w/o really knowing what that means or where/why they exist.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[klokwise]

i don't have mod points at the moment, so i thought i'd make a comment instead. the above should be drilled into web designers before they're even allowed to touch a computer. the whole point of mark-up languages like html (used with css) is to seperate content and presentation. designing to a pixel-based layout it just lazy and almost always creates an inaccessible site. even if you've got some crazy graphical layout that you want to use, do it in css and your users can select the stylesheet they want to see.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[Grab]

Problem is that many web designers are graphic artists, not programmers. They're fine at drawing pretty pictures, but if you want something useable, go whistle. This wasn't so big a deal in the "old days" of the web when HTML was simple - artists could just about figure it out - but these days they need some proper programming know-how. I'm sure there are *many* counter-examples, but generally you find that there aren't so many ppl who are good programmers *and* good artists.

Grab.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[erinacht]

I kind of know what you mean, but to tell the truth, I don't want something that scales up to my resolution and looks huge on the screen (like a pdf does with the new windows viewer - yuk.) Clever use of CSS should allow more content to show when more space is available - rather than just making the existing content bigger.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[mpmansell]

This problem continues all through web development.

Web applications (effectively anything that has active/dynamic content) are just implementations of the Client/Server paradigm. Back before the web Client/Server development was considered quite an art and effective practioners were respected.

This was not elitism; good client server is involved requiring consideration to be given to information issues and protocols. Web design is actually a difficult implementation of this because it is a 'one shot' protocol with only limited state keeping capability.

Because these designers don't realise this they assume that they can design a site and someone else just does the server code behind it.

For all but the simplest sites this is plain rubbish and the reason why there are so many poor implementations in web land.

Truly great sites have been designed with this interdependence in mind. Even if the original versions didn't, either by decision or a kind of Darwinian Extreme Refactoring the current great versions take this into account.

For good sites, you either need architects who are also good artists, or teams where each skill is regarded with the respect it requires without undue emphasis being given to one discipline over another. This is a professional and management issue that shouldn't be a problem. Other engineering disciplines manage to combine art with engineering effectively (cars, architecture, civils) so it should be achievable. I suspect it all comes down to professionalism (the real stuff, not the excrement bad managers talk about)

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[Curtman]

Great suggestion. Also, stop filling their heads with grandiose titles like 'webmaster'. As far as I'm concerned if they have a degree from Hogwarts, by all means wave the webmaster degree with pride. The rest are just delusional.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[scrytch]

> TV companies don't have to worry about whether viewers have 14-inch or 32-inch screens; the picture just scales to fit. It should be this way with web-sites too.

It doesn't "scale" anything. Your TV has a 648x486 resolution no matter what physical size it is. The problems with fixed resolution sites is because of applying the thinking that the web should work like a tv.

PDA's now surf the web, and though you often still have to make explicit "small screen" design decisions so it doesn't look like you just smooshed a big page down, the general trend is toward screen size independence, not some ridiculous 1024x768 size. Besides, my entire screen is 1024x768, and that's the default on most machines now (recall that most people never change the defaults). With all the borders, taskbars, toolbars, tabs, menus, and other visual chrome, most people don't have nearly that resolution left. I certainly don't, even in full-screen mode.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[Txiasaeia]

Hark, the technology is here! It's called Opera. Opera can scale *everything* on a page, including graphics - you can make everything fit into a 1" x 1" corner of the screen, or have two words fill up the entire screen. Mind you, scaled graphics are not as pretty, but they're typically ads, so who cares?

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[E_elven]

Well, the ones who develop using CSS for layout are usually very standards-aware, it's the other guys who are the problem.

The resolution I develop for is 100%, but one can make good fixed-width layouts, even ones that run off the viewport horizontally, which requires real talent (or good luck). See CSS Zen Garden.

HTML is designed to scale

[salesgeek]

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.

Re:HTML is designed to scale

[zhiwenchong]

I agree, and I've noticed lately that many major sites have been redesigned for scaling e.g. oracle.com. IBM.com still constrains their layout to a fixed resolution though.

I can guess why some people would still want to design fixed-resolution sites. Some of these web-designers probably come from a print background, and as a result of their training, they are stuck with a lot of print-specific notions that are admittedly hard to discard.

I have to concede that designing for a fixed resolution is simply easier in most cases (especially if you use a lot of bitmaps and rely on oldskool 1-px tricks to achieve your layout). Fixed resolutions give you absolute coordinates, which are just more convenient to work with. To some extent, they also help to ensure your layout's robustness across browsers (e.g. a width="30%" doesn't always give you 30% in all browsers) The layout at wolfram.com, for instance, would have been more difficult to achieve using scalable elements.

CSS solves a big part of the problem by giving you a level of control that allows for precision layout, but unfortunately some elements like bitmaps just don't scale (and SVG isn't widespread yet).

The other (albeit inadvertent) benefit of contraining the size of a page to a lowest-common-denominator fixed resolution like 640x480, is that it keeps the text-width small for the majority of people who run at higher resolutions. The advantage of doing this is the same as the advantage of having columns: studies have shown that shorter text-widths make for higher readability.

Having said that, I prefer scalable-resolution websites myself.

At the end of the day, it's about achieving a balance between function and form. And it's really really hard to do, so most people choose one or the other. Props to you if you can do both.

Re:HTML is designed to scale

[mpmansell]

They do if they are worried more about appearance than content and get carried away with their own cleverness at outdoing other designers in sheer glittery prettiness while being egged on by PHBs who may possibly be unable to understand the site's intended content so settle for cooing at the nice shiny things ;)

A big problem is that there is no requirement for proper training in the industry and because most clients know less than the 'designers' and have become used to disappointment they accept any tripe that is spouted to them.

I've felt for many years that there should be more emphasis on UI design issues and their execution than image manipulation and CSS. The problem is that most emphasis on available information for newbies or wannabes is squewed from the wron direct, namesly appearence rather than content.

Unless it is a site for which the media is all important (arty farty for its own sake, or some hip community sites, etc. - all relevant and valuable expressive arts in their own right) the main reason I go to a site is for content. I want that content to be accessible and easy to assimilate. I don't want to get eyestrain because some moron has decided that 4 point is perfect (and looks crap on my hi-res monitor) or has neglected simple and easy to learn colour rules that any halfway decent UI or Graphics (art or computer) would make blindingly (sorry:) ) obvious. I don't want to spent half an hour hunting over a daft image to find hot links to jump to the information I want and I don't want to wait 5 minutes to find that that was the wrong link because some moron has decided to feed me 30megs of uncompresses/unoptiminsed/gratuitous images. (Insert other obvious rants as necessary. If you can't think of any more, then I hope you are not a 'web designer' :) ). Of course, sensible use of images can make a site both visually more appealing and more accessible.

Like too many areas of our industry there is too little emphasis on professional training and it is all too normal for untrained and inexperienced people to be employed to do serious engineering work; and, believe me, designing a first rate web site is down to good engineering (even if you also have to be a good artist as well). Why is this the case? In no other industry would rank amateurs be granted such a free hand. When some figures state that over 60% of projects fail to live up to expectation or be delivered then the financial costs and dangers are obviously high. When safety issues are at stake, the problem becomes even worse.

While I have known many self taught people who are utterly brilliant, they are the minority among the self taught. It is entirely possible that should they get formally qualified, then they may also be among a minority among the 'professionals' as well, but that is another story and has more to do with the quality of training available today.

All in all, though, when it comes to web design, while we allow people whose experience stems from reading a "teach yourself in 24 minutes" book then we will continue to have poorly designed websites.

Anecdotally, I must tell a story about one such person. Several years ago I took charge of a project where MISmanagement had allowed degeneration to a dangerous level. In the team I inherited was a hairdresser (nothing against hairdessers) who had picked up a copy of Homesite and magically 'became' a web-designer. Most of my previous rants could easily apply to him. On one occasion X3C compliant HTML I produced broke his poorly designed CSS and he went ape. Seeing an opportunity to belittle me and with a total lack of professionalism, rather than discussing it with me, he announced this 'failing' to whole team stating my code was "not standard" and that this was the problem with all us 'Linux Types' and Computer Scientists. Unfortunately for him, the code was X3C standard compliant and I could even tell him (after a quick check :) ) which part of the standard (page, chapter, paragraph.

I don't use my browser maximised

[Kris_J]

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.

forget resolution.

[the_greywolf]

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.

Some numbers

[Scarblac]

No time to read the article, but I'll fill in some stats from our site:

• 640x480: 0.15%
• 800x600: 10.9%
• 1024x768: 54.8%
• 1280x1024: 19.7%
• other/undetected: 14.4%

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.

More pet peeves

[grotgrot]

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.

Fixed resolution, not minimum resolution

[mpmansell]

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.

Re:Why it matters

[salesgeek]

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.
Actually, this really depends on your audience. Go to this site or google or ebay and then tell me about attractive = requirement.

Third, you've got to make your site usable.
That's why you shouldn't design to a particular resolution your site becomes unusable when, say, I have two windows on my screen. Or I fire up the Treo... or for that matter, when my half-blind dad browses at 640x480 on his 19" monitor. As for all the tripe you dripped about style guides and the like, reality is that you can do an OUTSTANDING job making a site that looks good at many resolutions. The web is not print media. It is designed to scroll vertically (hence anchors and hyperlinks)... It can be resized and altered by the user when she goes into preferences and overrides your beautiful 9pt type.

Re:Depends on your audience...

[kevin lyda]

ah, so this is why game websites suck. i was wondering.