Drawar

Virtually all new computers ship with a monitor set to 1024x768. No one uses 8x6 unless they set it that way themselves.

I should say "ship with a monitor set to at least 1024x768"

It's a lot more complex than "what resolution monitors ship with. Here's my silver bullet resource on the topic from Baekdal.com:

Web Design Browser Sizes

Here's a good wrap up of all the statistics:

"If you want to design for 95% of your visitors you need design for no more than 776x424px (fixed layout) - or between 720x400px to 1408x912px (fluid layouts)."

i put 994 in width )

Yeah designing for the 1024w crowd isn't too bad although more and more (I would say) "mainstream" sites are breaking through this with 1100-1300 widths... This does make a lot more people get friendly with that horizontal scroll bar.

For stats on all the browser capabilities (eg how many people are using what):
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Just remember that those stats are probably going to cover every type of user. If you site is filed at one demographic, you'll probably be able to deviate towards your userbase.

I had a similar dilemma when considering WebSafe a while back...
http://www.thepcspy.com/blog/is_websafe_still_important

If I'm using a fixed width design, I still shoot for 800x600. Even though most people have 1024x768 or higher, I think you look dumb to people with 800x600 if they have to horizontally scroll.

If I'm using a fixed width design, I still shoot for 800x600. Even though most people have 1024x768 or higher, I think you look dumb to people with 800x600 if they have to horizontally scroll.

IMHO people browsing at 8x6 (in general) aren't too terribly concerned about their net experience. Otherwise they'd be using a higher res.

I design on my laptop that is 1280x800 and check on my desktop PC that is 1024x768 I simply don't know anyone that still use 800x600 and even if I wouldn't change...

JustinKistner: I have been the same way for quite some time now, with fixed widths I design around 800x600, but it's getting old. While designing I often times lower my screen res to get an actual visual of how the site appears in different browsers. I know at some point the jump has to be made. I believe we are getting close.

frozted I completely agree! From my experience these are the same people whom have their windows title bars 50px thick and desktop riddled with icons. Another thing to remember, now that IE 7 has implemented tabs and many are using firefox, how many of these people have multiple rows of bookmarks and tabs? Something to keep in mind. With all of that said, seems like we are limited more to a 350-450px height when designing around 800x600. I'm making the switch.

however if you have a tip where to preview what a design looks like in other screen resolution...without having to manually change it each time...

The Web Developer toolbar for Firefox is something you should have already which has the capability to resize your browser window to emuate the screen sizes of other resolutions... But that assumes you're running your browser in full-screen mode.

There is a similar toolbar for IE7 but it's nowhere near as good.

Otherwise, you could also try out BrowserShots, a fabulous free system where you punch in the URL, select which OSes/browsers/resolutions you want to see and it comes back with screenshots. Usually takes somewhere between 1-2 hours for all the pictures, but it is free. There are paid-for versions that I know many professionals use.

I'm not saying, for one second, that 800x600 users have any choice in whether their browser is maximised or not, but you do need to consider that 1024x768 user might not like to have their browser on full-screen mode.

800x600

because they look pretty on 1024x768

awwwwwwww

I test in a handful of browsers, not all of which have extensions and toolbars to allow us to preview sites at different resos. I change between resos quickly with keyboard shortcuts, it seems to give me the most realistic results, considering those tool bars only give you the view inside the browsers page area. I'm not sure if they compensate for OS title bar sizes, tabs and bookmark bars.

I just took a screenshot of Firefox resized with the webdev toolbar and it made the browser window 800x600. That does mean you would lose some vertical pixels for the task-bar, but little more.

Just tested the IE one too. Does exactly the same.

One small detail people should also keep in mind, is that many overhead projectors used at conferences are stuck in the dinosaur years and only display 800x600 resolution. Nothing is more embarassing than having your site references in a slideshow only to see ugly horizontal scrollbars :)

Just another random thought. To me, sites designed around 800x600 annoy me on my 19" LCD even at only 1280x1024. So I figured I would ask, What desktop resolutions does everyone here typically use?

1152x864 on a 17"

well, mostly 1280x800

frozted is that 17" a wide screen version or...? Does that reso display a stretched effect?

not so frozted and michaellouviere. In addition to projectors, many older but still perfectly good laptops have lower resolutions as well. Other people have bad eyes and need lower resolutions to see.

The bottom line is that you should design for your audience. If your audience (like mine) is less likely to have new monitors pre-set to a giant resolution or will be using public computers where they have less control over the settings, then keep 800 by 600 in your bag of tricks. It won't look bad at higher settings and it will keep us dinosaurs with desktops covered in icons happy.

Especially if you don't need more width.

There are few things more annoying than to load up a website that is fixed to a width larger than my available screen space when there little reason it has to be that wide (read: large pretty images). I say, when in doubt, go fluid.

sparkalyn I agree 100% with the idea that we all design and develope our sites based on the target audience pertaining to that site.

However, The jump to designing sites around 1024x768 is inevitable. Especially now that 17"+19" LCD's with native resolutions of 1280x1024 are becoming mainstream. If you have visited a site design based around 800x600 on screen with a significant higher resolution, It does appear crammed in all that space. Not ALL designs work with fluidity.

Agreed. 1280x1024+ will be the "standard" desktop resolution as soon as everyone manages to replace their CRTs... But we won't be able to ignore 1024x768 completely for a while, if ever, due to other devices like projectors as Mike said.

That's always going to be the problem with webdesign. The designers will always have the latest things, be those browsers, resolutions or plug-in functionality and that sometimes makes it hard to imagine how on earth people can use these "dinosaur" computers to work on the internet.

However, with more and more mainstream sites urinating in the face of the bottom-end browsers and computers, we might find it easier to justify moving up, even when there are 3-5% of people using incompatible browsers.

Either that or we manage to suck it up enough to leave the design-comforts of fixed-widths and go fluid. I'm certainly not brave enough yet but plenty are.

If you have visited a site design based around 800x600 on screen with a significant higher resolution, It does appear crammed in all that space.

It really depends on the execution of the design in that space but yes, some designs do need more than 800 x 600 to be "right".

Not ALL designs work with fluidity.

Agreed. I don't have anything against fixed width, or even wide sites/designs, it just depends.

I don't visit 9rules on the laptop because a) I know I'll have to scroll and b) I have a perfectly good widescreen monitor for viewing 9rules and I don't have to look at it on 800 by 600.

My main point is that if you're designing a site that people may use for something other than entertainment or casual interest, where they don't really have the choice of leaving because it's too wide for comfort consider making a design that does work if it's narrow versus one that doesn't.

I guess I'm just reluctant to tell people "yes you can probably ignore 800 by 600" because although is is less than 5% of all internet users, if those 5% make up 80% of your audience then it really doesn't matter.

I'm also jealous because my audience won't get on the ball and upgrade :)

@ michaellouviere: Nope, it looks great.

For tech-related sites (as in a site where I know most visitors are either computer savvy or just very lost), I design for 1024x768.

For smaller sites, artists, musicians, or any "non-tech" stuff, I drop back down to 800x600.

Currently for a 1024 maximum width, though this depends on the particular project. I am not a fan of fluid width sites. My site is accessible to anyone, and anyone using a 800x600 monitor can still read my site. If they have to scroll horizontally, that's their issue. Most of my readers access content via RSS anyway. My stats indicate that even at its current width I am accomodating more than 90% of the visitors to my site.

I designed Rain around "safe" width of 968px. This particular width has the benefit of being divisible in a great many ways.

I don't mean to simply re-type my comment from Cameron Moll's post, but I've been strongly trying to influence the use of site designs that degrade.

I believe we should approach screen resolution much like we do JavaScript. Best-practice tells us to degrade, degrade, degrade!! We should be degrading our layouts for screen resolution just as we do for the technology running our sites. Build them for an optimal width of 1024 but let the layout accommodate a screen resolution width of 800 without a scroll.

I've written my thoughts on this topic: 800x600, should I really care?

I think you should check on your stats, sitemeter can track how many percent of your readers using 8x6 or other res.

The real question really has nothing to do with screen resolution so much as it does with window size. Unless you can guarantee that everyone who visits your site is running full screen with no sidebar tools (such as sage).

How many of you run your browser window maximized? I don't, for one.

rangga, you said,

"I think you should check on your stats, sitemeter can track how many percent of your readers using 8x6 or other res. "

Isn't this a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts? If you have a site that is 1,000 px wide won't it deter people with 8x6 resolutions from visiting your site?

I am still going 800x600, but that is as much for organizing content as anything else. I try to keep my main content area to around ten words wide or less, and so I don't currently need the additional space provided by larger resolutions, though 940px wide is becoming more enticing to me.

The real question really has nothing to do with screen resolution so much as it does with window size. Unless you can guarantee that everyone who visits your site is running full screen with no sidebar tools (such as sage).

But if you limit your site to what some people do with their browser, you'd have to design for 640*480, if not smaller.

I do understand your argument. We don't see (too many) designs for 80px width. Some people could handle ~1200 but people with that sort of res, tend not to have anything running fullscreen. That's kind of the point of the higher resolutions, isn't it?

With the lower res, the user is clearly choosing an unreasonably low resolution. Unless their PC is 10 years old, they can move up a notch... Or turn CSS off. Again, it's their choice.

When you can push a genuinely decent wide-design out and sit on it because 2% of your users can't get with the times, that's sad. You allow your creativity to be constrained for the sake of everyone seeing the same thing. I say (and I must say, now, I've been on the wine this evening) I'll do the source well, everyone that wants to play (98%) can see a beautiful site and 1-2% can hit the button to turn off CSS.

I'm not saying dump on anyone not using 1280, just those that still view the web with 1990-goggles on.

A drunk man's corrections...
From: We don't see (too many) designs for 80px width.
To: We don't see (too many) designs for 1280px width.

Stupid wine ='(

If I have to horizontally scroll to view a page, I bail. I hate that, its a pain and it makes it so much harder to read.

I think there are still enough people out there using 8x6 that we should still be designing for it. Obviously if a client requested a design for a higher res, I'd do that but personally, I don't want any potential clients coming to my personal site and having to scroll horizontally. Doesn't look really professional.

As a couple of people have mentioned, screen resolution is only the beginning of the story, not the end. Not everyone maximises their web browser window!

The real trouble, in my view, is the lack of support for a bunch of CSS properties that would make our lives a hell of a lot easier. If IE6 dealt correctly with min- and max-width, for example, we could have (that is, use in commercial circumstances where IE6 support is necessary) layouts that were fluid at smaller window widths but fixed at larger ones---important from a usability perspective because overly long lines become unreadable.

Just rebooted my site, works in 800x600, looks good to me @ 1280x1024! yay!!

1024 x 768. I have having a 6 year old computer. Doesn't really change my work though, i do all my work on paper :D

frotzed:

"Isn't this a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts? If you have a site that is 1,000 px wide won't it deter people with 8x6 resolutions from visiting your site?

well it's around 5-6 percent, if they don't like my blog... I'm really sorry.

I think 990x600 fits 1024x768 and above very well.

I usually design around 1024x768 although with the amount of larger screens there are, especially the widescreens I am beginning to do fluid designs. I actually did my first fluid one the other day. It seems to have worked out pretty well actually.

Well I switched from signing for 800x600 early last year and now go for 1024x768. The max width I use now is around 960 to 970.

I design for around 900x (tops) due to the fact that I and many other visitors have a higher resolution than browser window. My laptop is 1280x854, but my browser window is around 920.

My resolution is 1024*768, so I typically go for that, but every time I start a blank canvas it's 1000*1000, no matter how wide the actual layout will be,

I mainly design for a 1024x768 screen but I keep the width under 960px.

I'm using both 1024 x 768 & 1280 x 800.
Actually it's quite difficult to make things perfect when some of the viewer might use even larger or small resolution~

I am currently using 1280x1024 which is a very nice resolution although I would love to have a bigger one so that I can use the zoom tool in Photoshop to it's full extent (I currently can't because all of the pallettes overlap the image).

I really don't design around a resolution. Worst case I want my content readable around 800 wide, but generally try to make it accessible regardless of how you're viewing it.