Help a Dem web designer: What is your screen resolution?

[expatriot]

Poll question: Help a Dem web designer: What is your screen resolution?

I am always amazed at how many people have their screens set at 800 x 600. I can see that being the ideal for old people or people with poor vision, but come on!

If you don't know what I am talking about, go to your desktop and rightclick on your background and then click on "Properties" and then the Setting tabs.

[ixion]

1. I always get asked to design for 800x600, and I never know why

I don't think anyone uses that res anymore. Or they shouldn't... get a graphics card! :-)

[asthmaticeog]

8. A lot of people are only wired at work

and plenty of workplaces save money by not updating monitors. Even for home users, 800x600 is the best res for a website if your goal is not to exclude a significant number of potential users.

One thing that's going to have an effect though, is that more American 'net users are on broadband than on dialup now (just read that last week, forgot the source, sorry). If designers start making sites with that in mind, almost half of users might find themselves screwed by longer download times caused by increased use of nested tables, bells & whistles and other exotica.

On edit: The info about broadband users may have been via Metafilter.

[LeighAnn]

10. 'Cause then it will work no matter what the resolution

If you don't design for 800x600, then your site is likely to look horrible on screens set like that. If you design for 800x600, it will always look right.

According to my stats, 27.5% of my visitors are using 800x600. That's basically 27,500 visitors a month, too many imo to show a site that doesn't fit their screen.

Make sure with your tables and stuff that you're using percentages for width, and not pixels. If you put everything in a table that's 756 pixels wide, it will fit the 800x600 screen, but on the 1024x768 screen you will have a small page running down the center with big margins on the sides. If you're tables and cells are set in percentages, it will always fit nicely no matter what the resolution.

I think.

[miss_kitty]

12. that only happens on my screen

when the NVidia thinger goes insane

[eleny]

2. 1280 x 1024

[Mr. McD]

7. Same here 1280 x 1024

[Guy Fawkes]

18. Same here, too.

[KurtNYC]

3. laptops

I design on a huge monitor but test on a laptop. I think it is always safer to design smaller rather than larger. And keep controls and crucial info in the upper left corner.

[pagerbear]

11. Yes!

I hate amateurish web designs that are just too large. I have a larger monitor at work than at home, and some of the web sites I view at home are a pain in the ass.

While I'm on the subject, am I the only one who finds bells and whistles (Flash intros, etc.) annoying?

[miss_kitty]

13. hell yes!

any flashy stuff, noise, graphics...just STFU! i say...i hate ads that are flashing about utterbullshit when i am trying to read a serious news story

or i am listening to something i WANT to listen to, click on a site, and all of the sudden i've got a mashup!

[SheepyMcSheepster]

4. not to nitpick, but shouldn't it be 1280x1024

well, i guess that is nitpicking :D

i voted for 1280x1064

[KurtNYC]

5. 800 x 600 is the second most common rez

If you have Webstats running on your site you can look up the visitors' resolutions for yourself.

Here are some stats from a heavily trafficked website:
http://www.zodiacstats.com/user.php?action=screen_resolution&a=backcomfort

[TrogL]

9. No wonder so many people get migraines from computers

They generally run 800*600 at 60 hz. They also have fluorescent lights in their office. The flicker is not to be believed. For some wierd reason (probably autism related) I can see it, but most people can't.

A 17" monitor should be running 1042*768*lots of colours at 85 Hz refresh (or whatever is the fastest your monitor will handle).

[DS1]

16. I can spot 60Hz flicker a mile away

the first thing I do on any new machine is up the refresh to 75, otherwise I'm in physical pain :scared:

[daisygirl]

20. Huh. I never noticed any flicker before, but

I just upped my refresh rate to 85 Hz (was set to 70 before). I get headaches a lot - maybe that's part of the reason.

[DS1]

6. 640x480 is all but unusable

I'm comfy with 775 across, usually in a frame centered like so:

http://www.infiniumlabs.com/

[NashVegas]

14. 1024 x 768 BUT!!!!!

I believe there's nothing more obnoxious than a web page designed to fill up a whole screen. This is partly due to being a longtime Mac user, where the early defaults placed emphasis on vertical, not horizontal design.

[bif]

15. I always preview it on a 17" monitor

A lot of folks still have small screens.

[lazarus]

17. Some added stats for you

This is just my blog, but here's the stats of those who view it. (Understand that a bunch of the 1024x768 hits are me updating it.)

1024x768 2621 58.93%

800x600 860 19.33%

1280x1024 613 13.78%

Other 162 3.64%

1152x864 139 3.12%

1600x1200 31 0.69%

640x480 21 0.47%


What's weirder is that I actually had someone hit me the other who was using Windows 3.1!

[Ratty]

19. Man do I ever hate 800 x 600

But I design for it. My own computer at work is set to 1024 x 768 and I simply can't stand to work at 800 x 600 for any length of time. I usually design just about everything at 1024 x 768 then at some point I switch to 800 x 600 and begin to clean up the damage. If I was smart I'd set my resolution to 800 x 600 all the time at work. It would save me a LOT of pain, but I just can't stand to do it. It is SOOO painful to get rid of some things because they just can't be made to work at that resolution. One I trick I use is a lot of javascript to detect screen resolution and use document.write() to spit out those portions that are most critical. A framed document is even easier because I can make two versions of each frame then put some very simple javascript in the master frameset file to serve out the different versions.

I ALSO have to support Netscape 4! Hard to believe but a significant number of people here at work still use Netscape 4. And for some reason a lot of our visitors use Netscape 4 too. Maybe it's something about libraries, I don't know. Javascript gets me out of some jams there too. A lot of "if (document.getElementById)" and "document.write()" gets me out of some jams.

[daisygirl]

21. I couldn't vote - here's what I do:

I run at 1024x768, but I hate having the browser run at full-screen. What I do is make it a bit narrower than the screen, stick it on the left-hand area of the the screen, and put my most important icons on the right-hand side of the desktop. Solves two problems: narrower lines to read on web sites (I hate, hate, hate having to read text that's in lines a mile wide) and quick access to programs I use a lot without using the start menu or any toolbar widgets.

Effectively, my browser is about 850 pixels wide. Drives me nuts when sites are designed for a wider screen than that because I don't like having to resize my browser and cover up my desktop icons...