1024x768 fixed

They have: 30 posts

Joined: Mar 2001

That's the current site spec for the page I'm working on, and it has been that way since December of 2003. Now I'm staring at two weeks of recent log results, looking like a solid 10% of folks are still using the site with Netscape 4.x editions:

1 Internet Explorer 6.x 766,357 47,124 60.85%
2 Netscape 4.x 41,506 7,758 10.02%
3 Internet Explorer 5.x 71,164 6,698 8.65%
4 Netscape 6.x 105,907 5,168 6.67%
5 Netscape 7.x 79,876 2,714 3.50%

Will be getting screen resolution information logged, but with 10% of folks using Netscape 4.x, I'm figuring on a large percentage of 800x600 users.

Tempted to stay with the 1024x768 fixed width, and vastly improve screen real estate quality, so even 800x600 folks get full navigation and see a bit of what they are missing. Right now, they don't get full navigation and miss a complete column of content. It will be an improvement for them, since they are getting screwed over at the moment, and the extra real estate will come in handy.

Also, the design will have to work well in Netscape 4.x, no questions.

What do you folks think?

-B

They have: 344 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Could we have a link so it could be "tried out"? If you're looking to get the same design in all resolutions then liquid CSS or tables could be your answer...but to do this you may have to sacrifice some of your design...if you make your site for 800x600 then it should be ok in the higher resolutions - albeit a lot smaller! Smiling

Do what you think is best, if you've been getting no moans about the site in 800x600 yet still get plenty of visitors - you must be doing ok.

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

IMO since your going for NS4.* you'll be doing without the bells and whistles so would probably be better with a fixed 800x600 if you were to go fixed. Liquid would be better if your layout could handle it, this way you wont have to upgrade your layout once the stats change.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

You could also serve a different stylesheet to Netscape users so they get a basic design and put in the bells and whistles for the other browsers that support them.

Regarding your three column layout, you could use the right column for unnecessary but nice to see types of content like advertising, related links, that sort of things. So those users aren't really missing out on anything important, but users of higher resolutions have some extra features to work with.

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