To 1024 or not to 1024?
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- Chris Baskind
- Sr. Rocketeer
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I have been setting up all my sites to accommodate 800px screens. My little personal blog, for instance:
moreminimal.com
Looking back over my metrics for the last few weeks, I see that 800px screens are no longer statistically significant, which surprises me. By "significant," I mean 5% or less.
My other sites are showing slightly higher percentages of 800px visits -- but still less than 10%. This is down pretty sharply from last year.
I'm certainly not going to make a call based on just a few fairly low-traffic sites. What are you guys seeing on more representative samples? Are we there yet? Couldn't help but notice that the latest template offering from another design group -- just issued over the weekend -- is 1024, fixed.
The reason I'm asking is that I'm building out a site based on Mobius that uses a Flash rotator in the header (inset) module. You can set the rotator to relative positioning, of course, and design a rotator that looks optimal at 800px and okay at 1024. But it would really be best to choose one size or the other to get the rotator looking right. The new template mentioned above features an advanced Flash rotator, which is perhaps why they opted for fixed width.
Opinions appreciated. I admit to leaning toward fixing Mobius at 1024px to make the Flash look best on the most screens, but I'm not yet committed.
Thanks. - Last Edit: 18 years 2 weeks ago by .
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- Dave Goodwin
- Elite Rocketeer
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I use 1024 - especially for photos.
dave - "I'm an individual, just like everyone else."
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I would not care about 800X600 - especially in your situation...
I mean if people are still running with that type of resolution, chances are that they dont even have Flash installed either..
Now when can we skip 1024x768
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- Chris Baskind
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 100
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These are both helpful comments.
The connection between a user's screen resolution and the technologies they can support hadn't really occurred to me before. Digging down into the 800px visitors, it's true that a disproportionate number are running Win 98. So perhaps you're right: these users may very well not have Flash or the compliant browsers needed to use my site.
On more minimal, I really don't *need* much screen real estate. If I went to 1024, it would be happily given over to whitespace. I'll seriously consider dumping 800px design as I consider the new and more complicated site.
Thanks.
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Well tbh I don't really have a clue about it, it's just a feeling..
I mean if you don't mind looking into a 14" monitor running at 800X600, I'm sure you don't mind your cluttered Win95, the goold old IE 5. somthing, and the trusty v90 modem beeping a nice tune along with the harddisk making noises due to the scratch disk is on hard work since the 128mb system ram apparently wasnt really enough.... Pff Flash why would I need Flash... Doh you never heard of animated gifs?
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- Come to think about it.... the same people have probably by accident opend all hidden pallettes and options in IE, along with ICQ, 6 different Yahoo toolbars - so the actual real estate available is more in the region of 280px X 160px...
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- GollumX
- Elite Rocketeer
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I mean if you don't mind looking into a 14" monitor running at 800X600, I'm sure you don't mind your cluttered Win95, the goold old IE 5. somthing, and the trusty v90 modem beeping a nice tune along with the harddisk making noises due to the scratch disk is on hard work since the 128mb system ram apparently wasnt really enough.... Pff Flash why would I need Flash... Doh you never heard of animated gifs?Come to think about it.... the same people have probably by accident opend all hidden pallettes and options in IE, along with ICQ, 6 different Yahoo toolbars - so the actual real estate available is more in the region of 280px X 160px...
lmao - Say no to Internet Explorer 6.
twitter.com/mark_up
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- Dave Goodwin
- Elite Rocketeer
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Hi Christopher,
I'm sorry that I didn't have more time before. I had to dash at the time, but wanted to say something.
Thomas said in a more creative way that it's about time for you to move into the 21st Century. Do you want to cater to the folks that hang on to old technology (many from financial considerations) or do you want to cater to the people with the newer computers? If you lead the way, most of the rest will follow - or, you may be left behind - unless your users are lower income folks that can't afford a newer computer.
dave - "I'm an individual, just like everyone else."
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Although the survey I looked at was targeted at gamers, the average resolution out of 700,000 people was between 1024x768 and 1280x1024. More and more people are switching to LCD monitors, and most of those have the native resolution of 1280x1024. I remember my days at lower resolutions, and I was always afraid to move up any higher. There are people out there that even today have twice the resolution I have, but they are few and far between.
I believe the best method is dynamic width personally, but if the theme you are using doesn't allow for that then I would suggest going by your statistics. Personally, I've set my theme to wide for one reason that may push you to do the same. I hate scrolling. That is the fantastic thing about increasing your resolution, less scrolling.
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- Chris Baskind
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 100
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Well, you guys are telling me what I wanted to hear, which is to move ahead to 1024x768 as a default. My blog, which is 780px wide, toggles to fluid width, but I am likely to believe my metrics and bump up to 1024/fluid.
The new project will definitely be wide. Thanks for the input, guys.
kit
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