Viewing Thread:
"800x600 - When should we stop making sites for those jerks?"

--> Look at all that wasted space over there. So many sites designed for people using 800x600, yet who in the right mind would still be using that resolution. It's almost 2006 not the mid-90ies there should be no excuse for using it. Does anyone here still use 800x600? What resolution are you using? Do you have any trouble looking at 800x600 sites especially those of you using a very high resolution. When do you think sites, like SR, yahoo etc should increase their minimum resolution? 2010?

Ranma wrote:
> --Look at all that wasted space over there. So many sites designed for
> people using 800x600, yet who in the right mind would still be using
> that resolution. It's almost 2006 not the mid-90ies there should be
> no excuse for using it. Does anyone here still use 800x600?

I have four mates that (as far as I can remember) still use 800x600.

> What resolution are you using?

1024x768. It used to be 1152x864 but I got myself a new TFT monitor and although the screen is the same size as the screen before it, things looked smaller and I could hardly read what was on it.

> Do you have any trouble looking at 800x600 sites especially
> those of you using a very high resolution.

No. I can criticise SR though. It's the only site I know which isn't centered and has a massive white space to the right. When I make sites, I either make them stretch or reduce depending on screen size, or I make them for a specific screen size and centre it.

> When do you think sites, like SR, yahoo etc should increase their minimum
> resolution? 2010?

As soon as the percentage of people using 800x600 goes down to a reasonably low percentage.

The thing that ticks me off is "don't use this and that because it won't work in older browsers".

Now I'm not a web designer (though I have created some simple sites in the past), but does anyone know anyone who actually still uses Netscape 3 or IE4 as their main browser?

I say, "Tough - upgrade!"

lol, some interesting answers, but some of you have missed the whole mobile device market where resolutions are smaller than 800x600.

Ideally, sites should be designed resolution independent using scalable and flexible layouts. Those of you using fixed layouts at higher than 800 resolutions are alienating your audiences before you've even started and those of you who are using fixed layouts because their clients ask for continuity in design either need to spen more time educating their clients or studying usable design principles a little more.

This is no different from saying "When should I stop worrying about 56k users?" The answer is, you don't. Simple as that. Any of you ever done Interactive TV work? The resolutions & bandwidth involved in that would make some of you run for the hills crying! As for mobile device development such as PDA, PSP etc, your playing with even tighter restrictions. But all of this is easily managed by applying all of those principles people like Veen, Zalman, Neilsen and Meyer have been teaching us for the last two years allowing us to develop and design sites which do not need us to ask questions about resolutions.

I personally still try to cater for 800 (actually 720), but where p[ossible, you still try to make your product useable if not pretty. Pixel perfect design is a thing of past Graphic Designers who came from print backgrounds which little knowledge or understanding for the internet (I myself was one of them).

Hmmm... wrote:
> "800x600 - When should we stop making sites for those
> jerks?"
>
> I'm not sure you had your Customer Service hat on when you
> wrote that...
>
> I don't view my visitors or my client's visitors as
> jerks !
> I'm happy to take money from people using ANY display resolution.

I wanted to add a smilie face after the jerks but then I decide not to :)

How do I change my browser resolution?

On the site someone linked it showed a decrease of 5% in 6 months for 800x600, now at 1 in 4 users. Down from 1 in 2 three years ago, perhaps when Windows Vista comes out it'll be lowered even more to the point where it'll be more worthwhile to use up the empty space than cater for the minority using 800x600.

"800x600 - When should we stop making sites for those jerks?"

I'm not sure you had your Customer Service hat on when you wrote that...

I don't view my visitors or my client's visitors as jerks !
I'm happy to take money from people using ANY display resolution.

I'm also happy to take some guidance from the BBC (who spend more money on this than most of us!), it's only in the last couple of years they started to design for 800x600 - when they move so will I...

If you think about it, the people using 800x600, arent going to be anyone who cares about good website design for what they're looking at, the people who you actually want to impress will be using a higher res anyway.

So just forget about the 800x600.

According to Mint, people who visit TIMMARGH.net are running:

1024 × 768 . . . . . . . . 51%
1280 × 1024 . . . . . . . 18%
1280 × 800 . . . . . . . . 6%
1920 × 1200 . . . . . . . 5%
800 × 600 . . . . . . . . . 5%
1152 × 864 . . . . . . . . 4%
1680 × 1050 . . . . . . . 4%
1280 × 854 . . . . . . . . 3%
1440 × 900 . . . . . . . . 3%
1600 × 1200 . . . . . . . 2%

So I'll still be allowing for 800x600 for a while yet ... and I've still got to sort out those Flickr photos.

[URL]http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp[/URL]

Go down to Display Resolution.

Apparantly, the trend for a while has been the majority running 1024 x 768.
Hopefully, the base will change from 800*600 in the near future.

Yeah, I always maximise windows - you can do some pretty interesting things with backgrounds, so the space isn't always wasted.

I've experimented before with giving an option to change the width of a site, from fixed to 100% (by setting a cookie depending on the choice), but it only really works for sites like chatrooms, or encyclopedias, like the Wikipedia - basically anything that is a tool that would be practical to alter the width.

Garin wrote:
> You should remember that screen resolution and browser window size
> arent the same thing.

Of course. Personally, I hate running multiple windows and maximize them all.