8 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
8 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

What display size to design for?

by DavidO
7 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
I'm about to start a makeover for my website.

I still find people advising to design for an 800 x 600 display but this really seems outdated to me. My stats show only 2.5% using such an old display. I think a content area of about 900 - 925 width makes better sense.

I should mention that my site site will be more like a landing page with a lot of graphics than a sales letter, most of which still go for skinny little column formats.

What width would you recommend?
#design #display #size
  • Profile picture of the author wayfarer
    It depends on who your target audience is. If you want the widest possible audience, and you still depend on people with outdated computers (this is becoming more and more rare, and probably isn't needed), you can optimize for 800 wide. This means you need to account for scrollbars, which means about 760px wide.

    Instead, you should probably be targeting 1024px wide monitors, which means accounting for scrollbars, leaving a maximum width of about 980px. I wouldn't go wider than this unless you are building a private website for users that you know for a fact have wider monitors.
    Signature
    I build web things, server things. I help build the startup Veenome. | Remote Programming Jobs
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[546238].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author coog
      Originally Posted by wayfarer View Post

      It depends on who your target audience is
      This is so true, design for your demographic. But it seems you've already done your homework (your stats are at 2.5% for 800x600) so design for 1024.

      An alternative would be to go fluid utilizing min and max width to stretch from say 750 to 966 (watch ie6 on min-width though, not supported)
      Signature
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[546396].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Jay Moreno
        Originally Posted by coog View Post

        This is so true, design for your demographic. But it seems you've already done your homework (your stats are at 2.5% for 800x600) so design for 1024.

        An alternative would be to go fluid utilizing min and max width to stretch from say 750 to 966 (watch ie6 on min-width though, not supported)

        couldnt agree more!

        i have a client that has a very popular online teen magazine, after reviewing our stats shortly after launch I found only a very small percentage used the small resolution - this info allowed us to maximize all of our space with the re-design, we use a real flash (flip-page) magazine which we wouldnt have been able to do had we gone and designed the site for the smaller resolution - we feel the desgn has added to the success of the magazine for my client!

        research your audience/visitor
        Signature
        Sorry, I am too busy helping people to think of a cool signature!
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[546438].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Cassidy
    I would go for 1024x768. You could say that if they are using something as ancient as something smaller they don't have any money to spend anyway.

    I'll risk getting drummed out of here before I even get started with a comment like that, but that's how I feel. I tried turning my display to something lower to check one site I was working on, and the only site that looked ok to me was google
    Signature

    Cassidy

    One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[546239].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author mywebwork
    I agree with Cassidy (BTW welcome to the forum!), 1024 x 768 is the minimum size I design for. I find 600 x 800 to be too constraining and pages designed to fit a screen that small often look abnormally tiny on modern widescreen displays.

    I figure anyone still using 600 x 800 (or lower) resolutions are already used to the vertical scrollbar and won't reject a page because of it. If you kept most of your relevant content and links on the left side of the page they wouldn't have to scroll very often.

    Bill
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[546291].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author mmacmillan
    Good feedback here, also wanted to throw some base for reference in here. Do a google search for "browser usage statistics"; you will see a good reference from w3schools.com that displays usage by browser, resolution, platform etc. As others have said (and as the stats show), you can/should design for 1024 width. You might want to consider a little less, as not all users's run their web browser maximized. hope this helps!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[546852].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author wayfarer
    Most of the fixed-width sites I build end up being about 960px wide, which looks nice on newer, high resolution monitors, but is still perfectly acceptable on a 1024. This is because most of the sites I build are targeted at people with money. I would dial it up a notch, but a lot of corporate computers still have 1024.

    Sites like MySpace were recently still built with 800 in mind, because a surprising large portion of their audience are on low-tech computers. However, I just checked, and they have updated their design to be a bit wider. You might think that with a huge audience, it follows that you have a slimmer site, but take Yahoo: they optimize for 1024, not 800, and they obviously have a huge audience. I often use Yahoo as a gauge for what I do online.
    Signature
    I build web things, server things. I help build the startup Veenome. | Remote Programming Jobs
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[548385].message }}

Trending Topics