Still design to please 800x600?

[deronsizemore]

I tend to stray toward fixed width layouts moreso than I do liquid. I guess it comes down to know how. I have more trouble it seems with liquid than I do with fixed. Anyway, that's not the point of the thread. I'm wondering, for those of you who use fixed width layouts, do you still design for 800x600? A LOT of the sites I'm seeing around the web do not and I really do not want to either, as I have a hard time fitting everything I want into a layout that works for 800x600, or the text is just really small. I noticed even Yahoo's new design has a horizontal scroll at 800x600. I guess it really is one of those things where you are darned if you do and darned if you don't. If you do, then you get people with really large resolutions complaining there is to much white space, if you don't, then people complain that they don't like to scroll.

Thoughts? How many of you are still getting a lot of 800x600 traffic?

[Cutter]

I am following in Yahoo's footsteps and building a new site for 1024x768. I am using CSS, so it will be fairly simple to scale back down.

I avoid fluid layouts, my experience with them and adsense clickthrough rates has not been that great.

[deronsizemore]

There were my thoughts also, to design for 1024x768. What width will you be using for your site? Something around 900? bigger?

[Johnny Gulag]

I still try to design for 800x600, though alot depends on my audience. If I was designing a site for web/graphic designers I might go for a 1024x768 layout, where as, if I was designing a site for helping AOL or MySpace users I may still target the 800x600 crowd.

[KLB]

I still use 800x600 as my design criteria. Part of my reasoning is that I personally think that just because the user has a giant monitor doesn't mean I need to take up the whole width. From time to time it is nice to have both a webpage and some other application (e.g. Word) open side by side with both being visible.

I also like to keep my content columns a little narrower as my eyes have a hard time staying on line on really long lines of text.

[agua]

I still try and design for 800 x 600, although recently I have wanted to go larger - I'm about to start playing with min/max-width css.

I'm not sure how good these browser statistics (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) are - but looking at their trends - I'd say between 15%-20% of users still use 800 x 600...

[chromate]

I still design for 800 x 600 - mainly for the reason that Cutter pointed out. It's much easier to get people to look where you want them to if you're dealing with a smaller screen space. 100% width fluid designs in particular make it hard to judge how a user will look at a page and where they're likely to click next. So really for me it's a revenue based decision more than anything. :)

But again on a purely aesthetic basis, unless your site is overflowing with content (I have one site like this) or has some intensive graphical element to it - 800 x 600 can still look really clean and nice. There's something nice about a clean compact design I think, rather than having everything spread out all over the place.

[Chris]

It depends, I like 1024 though and with newer sites I try to go for it.

Like my garden site:

http://www.backyardgardening.net/article/variegated-plants/

I like using decent sized 350-400px images with each article. It looks nice, users appreciate big pictures, but if I had a skinnier layout it wouldn't work.

Even 15 inch monitors can do 1024 layouts, so really any new computer sold in the last 6 years can probably do it fine, even most laptops. Only the computers bordering on 10 years old might have a problem with it. Then of course there are users who just like things bigger who'll set the resolution lower.

Anyways, if I were to do a layout lower than 1024 I'd do it at 730ish so that a leaderboard just barely fits inside of it. As I say in my most recent article that drastically improves the "blending-factor" of the ad.

[deronsizemore]

Good point about the leaderboard Chris. I guess if the site is 950 wide, then the leaderboard would look kinda out of place.

[Chris]

Its not so bad if your content area is 728 wide and your left menu takes up the difference.

But rather than do 800 pixel or 780 or whatever where you couldn't fit in both a leaderboard & a left/right menu, just do 730ish.

[Cutter]

The 1024x768 top & fold size is 955x600. I'm keeping it under 955 with the background showing at the borders.

We'll see how this works, I am just interested in testing it out since I have always designed for 800x600.

[A.N.Onym]

Don't see a reason not to design for the most popular resolution, 1024*768.
800*600 has 17% popularity according to these stats (http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/July/res.php).

You can't create a fluid layout that's an excuse, not a valid reason to neglect visitor experience.
It is relatively safe to createa 800*600 fluid layout with max width of 1250 or something.

[crobs808]

I just finished designing this site...

I know it is too big for 1024 users even, think I should leave it or rework it?

http://www.thepushmusic.com/

thanks,
::: Connor

[agua]

I'd redesign - its looks easy to do.

Your first page fits 1024, but your second page doesn't

[deronsizemore]

Don't see a reason not to design for the most popular resolution, 1024*768.
800*600 has 17% popularity according to these stats (http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/July/res.php).

You can't create a fluid layout that's an excuse, not a valid reason to neglect visitor experience.
It is relatively safe to createa 800*600 fluid layout with max width of 1250 or something.

Yeah, it's an excuse. Not trying to hide that fact. I just find it easier to design fixed width.

[crobs808]

Ok, I redid it in 975 width.

Fits on my old computer running at 1024x768...but I really hate the fact that people are still using such low resolutions...I've been using 1600x1200 and 1680x1050 for 6 or 7 years now...I wish Microsoft, Apple, and Linux OS makers would release software that required a min resolution of 1280x1024 or it wouldn't install, and anyone else could just use old versions, but we have to switch over sometime right?

Anyway, let me know if width is good now:
http://www.thepushmusic.com/

Thanks
::: Connor

[KLB]

Such a high resolution isn't readable for many people on a normal laptop display. The display resolution of my Thinkpad is normally 1280x1024, but the letters are so small that it gives me a headache to use it at that resolution. In order to use my laptop eyestrain/headache free I had to reduce its resolution to 1024x768. If I wanted to use a higher resolution I would need a monitor that at least 17" across and this isn't practical for a laptop.

If you can't fit what you are doing on a webpage that is being displayed on a 1024x768 monitor, you are probably trying to do too much and are trying to get too much information above the fold.

In a few years, once 800x600 monitors become non-existant, I may shift over to a layout tailored to 1024x768 monitors as it would allow me greater flexiblity but for now I'm sticking with what I know will work correctly for almost everyone.

[crobs808]

but you can set the resolution high and just change the DPI setting on the text in display properties so the text is larger, so you have more space to work with, but still readable text

plus, i may as well do 1024x768 and ignore the 800x600 users because the site i make are all graphic intensive and made for high speed connections, and usually computers with a good connection are more modern and have a good screen, so i'm ignoring the 800x600 crowd anyway

Connor

[Nikkular]

I know this thread is a bit old but i feel that i must add my 2 cents into this.

For the longest time, even while designing, i stuck to 800x600 screen resolution. The hard fact is that back then, i if i came upon a site that was too lage for my screen, i would just get fed up and leave, rather then having to deal with side scrolling all the time to keep reading content or to find the navigation.

I still design so that 800x600 users can browse my sites. I remember the pain and annoyance. All you really have to do is perhaps have a small pattern in the background, or a nice colour, so that on larger screens the site still looks good.

Well, i suppose thats just my personal opinion.

[collarbeam]

If you're going to use a fixed screen size than consider that just because I have 1024 pixels doesn't mean that I think your page is so wonderful, as you do, that I want it to take over my computer. I like pages that are 800*600 because I use, get this, more than one window at a time. Although 800*600 is rare as a screen size, those guys are already used to having each app with two inch tall letters taking over the screen. I use a high resolution so I can have more stuff, with more detail.

[coleblitz]

800X600 fixed layout......I like to be in control [:p]

[Westech]

Here is some data on screen resolutions from my highest trafficed site. It should provide a decent representation of users' resolutions on entertainment type sites:

Last few months combined:

1024x768 -- 61.28%
800x600 --- 19.11%
1280x1024 -- 9.69%
1152x864 --- 3.99%
other ------ 5.93%

800x600 has been gradually dropping each month. For October 1 - present it's only at 15.80%.

I've been using 800x600, but I think I'll be switching to 1024x768 for any future fixed-width sites or redesigns. If you're trying to fit a decent amount of content + a few ads in there you almost have to ditch 800x600.

[KelliShaver]

I think it depends on the type of site, too. If you don't have a lot of contentn or don't need a lot of columns of text, there's nothing wrong with a narrow leryout. It keeps line-length at a comfortable measure. I have a 21in monitor, I hate having to scan its entire width to read a block of text.

I'd say I do about half and half now (oprimzing for 1024x768 vs.0800x600). I still ike 800x600 for a lot of things. It's a comfortable size. I'm running a 1280x960 screen resolution, and I still don't find that it creates too much white space, provided the layout is centered.

[Meegook]

The last post on this topic was 10-20-2006.

I'm building my first site a property-travel site that will be mostly advertisements for properties and travel related customers.

Should I go with 800x600 or the 1024x?

I'm thinking of 800x600 with unlimted height. How do I do this ?
But I'm still building templates so could to to 1024. Help me please.

and also, how do I move my page to be centered?

Any help much appreciated.

[KLB]

I've been tracking the monitor sizes of my users via Google Analytics and between 11% and 12% of my users are still using 800x600. This is a fairly substantial user base that is still on 800x600. I'd recommend either sticking to 800x600 or going to a flexible layout.

[Meegook]

Thanks much. Kindly, where do I find instructions for going to a flexible layoout?

Can I convert my 800x600 to a flexible layout?

I'd be content with 800x if I could center the page and use longer/taller height.

I've been following a video tutorial and it's been fine, but no where do I see anything about the centering of the page, which must be an alignment issue in html. ?

And I'm stumped about the height.

[chromate]

If you have your main content in a table then it will extend height-wise to fit the amount of content you have. If you want to center it, just use <center> tags before and after your main content table. Example...

<center><table width="744"><tr><td>content</td></tr></table></center>

Sorry, the CSS "tableless design" squad will kill me. :) But whatever.. it works for the majority.

[Meegook]

Thanks much. I thought it was in the html code.

I think I'm going with 1024 because the # of users w/800 is diminishing and the # of users w/1024 increasing and I don't want to redesign anytime soon. Thanks for the help.

[James]

If you have your main content in a table then it will extend height-wise to fit the amount of content you have. If you want to center it, just use <center> tags before and after your main content table. Example...

<center><table width="744"><tr><td>content</td></tr></table></center>

Sorry, the CSS "tableless design" squad will kill me. :) But whatever.. it works for the majority.
*cocks gun*

[KLB]

*cocks gun*

I suspect the table advice was simply an attempt to give Meegook extra rope to hang them self with, which is more subtle and more deniable than a gun. :lol:

[chromate]

Tables rule. You know it.

... <runs for the hills>