I for one use 800 x 600, I can see 1024. But at 65 it's to much work to climb up on the desk, so I can get close enough.
I see people running 1600, I found a place where you can test your site in a mac browser. It will go to 1600, believe it or not my site held together well. But it took me 5 minutes to just make it across the page.
You would need at least a 25" monitor to run that.
Personally I think depending on what contents we dealing with on particular sites, so far I have avoiding the fuild design altogether, as if my designs were 800x600 I find that its a lot easier and also more consistant to work with, 1024 is the main res at the moment, so I can see why the larger sites have moved on, but most sites never have needs for anything larger then 800x600, with technology moving on everyday and standards changing every now so often, you cant expect to please everyone.
dragonsjaw posted this at 19:03 — 11th April 2006.
I've been struggling with this lately.
I am goung for 1024 on this latest site I am working on,
the client uses an ungodly high res and am having difficulty having a fluid workable site in 800 and 1024, it then falls totally apart on her res.
Interesting topic.
I still like fluid, and run at 1024 myself haven't used 800 in years.
But understand the eye strain thing..
a bigger monitor really helped with that..19" is just perfect for me now.
~dragonsjaw
"Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight- 'Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight." - Bruce Cockburn
Follow up to post above. Out of all my site meters, of which I have five.
800 x 600 = 10%, 1024 x 768 is dominate at around 37 - 40%.
One meter has an ungodly mix of about a dozen diffrent resolutions up to 1600 x 1240, with 1280 x 960 dominate, 1024 x 768 runner up. This one is my Blue Ridge home page mater. Total Confusion!.
A while back there was the big flash craze, everyone had flash ... the wider screen sizes can be the same thing until something new comes along - we make sites for others, if they don't like/aren't able to use them then they will go elsewhere.
Just back to the news thing for a sec, I get newspaper delivered, they had a good format and covered a lot of stuff but recently they changed format - for the worse. My subscription ends at the end of this month and I wont be renewing it, instead will just stick with online news. I'd rather have with print version but reading the paper should be easy not a mission to find anything, the weather with the death notices?
I think we shouldnt drop 800x600 just yet... if you can make it work for this res, better, if you absolutely must support only higher res, then its your choice anyways...
I just think that people have some loyalty to certain papers with high reputations. The NY Times isn't any old news site. Especially if people have been reading the paper version for years and years. Something like Google News is certainly not comparable to a regular newspaper.
Megan wrote: I just think that people have some loyalty to certain papers with high reputations. The NY Times isn't any old news site. Especially if people have been reading the paper version for years and years. Something like Google News is certainly not comparable to a regular newspaper.
And, to add to that - a change in one site might be tolerable, since they can swtich to an alternative or make do with the way it is. BUT, what happens when more and more sites start going wider? What if someone was a big news junkie and visited both CNN and the NY Times every day? And there will be other sites that decide to do this. It's that sort of build up that might make people change their settings.
Busy wrote: If sites stop working for them people will switch sites. With trillions of websites out there you could find what you wanted in nearly any flavour. Look at the thread (can't find it) about online banking, wasn't usable in certain browsers so banks were swapped
It did work for getting rid of Netscape though. And this isn't just any news site we're talking about, this is CNN and the New York Times. There's the whole aspect of reliable news sources to take into consideration. If people are watching CNN all day, they'll want to read the website too. They might even go to greater lengths to do so. I know that it would tkae a lot for me to switch my regular newspaper (it's got a terrible website but I'll put up with it because the cotnent is good).
And who was going to swap banks? That was JeevesBond. Not everyone is like that. Actually, I think a lot of people would put up with the resolution problem until someone showed them how to change it.
___________________________________________
Back to the original question, I think that it might be reasonable to fix widths at 1024 IF you have a really content heavy site (like CNN or the NY Times). However, I wouldn't put important content in that space. It would be good for secondary content areas, special features, things like that. But not key navigation. I don't like the way either of those sites are done, personally. Or, as Tim said, if you were designing for a younger audience or graphic designers or a group you could be sure would run at higher resolutions.
For other sites, there is no reason why you need to use that much space. Flexible works perfectly fine, and stays in tune with the users' needs. I find it kind of odd that some of these usability guru types are fixing their sites at higher resolutions actually. It is harder to do with CSS but who's not up to that challenge?
I do like fixed at 760 or so on sites that don't have a lot of content. Like my personal site for example - it would look too stretched out at higher resolutions because there's not much there. So fixed works well. Although that's probably a heck of a lot of pink on big screens
I'm one who uses 800X to avoid eye strain. Maybe if I had like a 21 inch monitor I'd change, but with a 17 inch, and me literally just a few inches from it, and even wearing bi-focals I have to strain my eyes.
Personally, when I see 800X get down to 2-3 percent I'll make the switch to kicking it aside.
I've actually changed the monitor setting for a few people and they've said "Thank you! I can see it now!!"
The trend is because XP comes with 1024X as default, and so many people do not know they can change it.
I will give up development if screen res minimum goes above 1024X though. 1024X is hard enough for me to work at, higher than that is impossible.
Another question to consider: Will the move by major sites like CNN and the NY Times force people to increase their screen resolution? If sites stop working for them, will they switch?
Megan wrote: Another question to consider: Will the move by major sites like CNN and the NY Times force people to increase their screen resolution? If sites stop working for them, will they switch?
If sites stop working for them people will switch sites. With trillions of websites out there you could find what you wanted in nearly any flavour. Look at the thread (can't find it) about online banking, wasn't usable in certain browsers so banks were swapped.
I've visited a few sites lately that were fixed big sizes, I needed to print them out, took me all day to modify the code so it would fit on portrait (landscape wasn't wide enough). If the wide site has columns, makes printing even harder. One site (list numbers) was so bad it wouldn't fit on two landscape pages side by side as they had three columns (with heaps of ads on sides as well as navigation) so I am in the process of making my own site on same subject so people can use the info with the ads, without the hassle of only printing bits and making a jigsaw.
Then you have sites that just love .pdf (dang I hate those), at 100% you have to scroll every which way, they are blurry, slow to load, don't always work and converting them to html (helpful hint down bottom for this) can be a real pain, even printing can be locked on them, most can't be modified without 'special tools' to make them fit the print size. resizing to fit the page is unreadable printed.
Tip converting .pdf to html:
If you have a gmail account, send the .pdf file to yourself, get it from your gmail account (don't use outlook etc if forwarded) and choose display in html and your done.
Down side is it uses fixed CSS to build the page, if it's wide it's wide and modifiying everypage is very time consuming.
I think it just depends on the site. If your site is primarily for college-age and younger, I don't see any reason to design for 800 x 600, personally.
But maybe not. I don't really believe that for sure. A lot of people use it just because they like the text bigger. It's not a matter of better technology or anything like that. It's not the same as browser improvements where people will upgrade eventually. It's more of a preference. I know a few people at work who are at 800 x 600 and refuse to switch. Or there are people like Busy who are just obstinate (kidding - old hardware, I know!).
Funny story: when my mom had her old computer she had it set at 800 x 600. When I used it I would up the resolution to 1024 because I couldn't stand it that small. If I forgot to change it back she'd complain that the font was too small. She didn't understand the concept of resolution - she just saw that the text was smaller after I changed it. When she got her new laptop last year it was set at a bigger resolution (it's widescreen so I'm not sure what the exact resolution is). She didn't even notice!! I even asked and she said no, it's no problem, she didn't notice a difference.
By the way, the counter.com has 800x600 still at 16%. That's pretty high to be dropping support for it IMO. Those can obviously vary from site to site but still...
(Just as a sidenote, for the realignment of this site I very briefly toyed with the idea of going to 1024 just so solve some layout issues, but it would have meant that some of the advertising would be cutt off at 800x600 which was clearly unacceptable.)
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steve40 posted this at 21:39 — 12th April 2006.
He has: 490 posts
Joined: May 2005
I for one use 800 x 600, I can see 1024. But at 65 it's to much work to climb up on the desk, so I can get close enough.
I see people running 1600, I found a place where you can test your site in a mac browser. It will go to 1600, believe it or not my site held together well. But it took me 5 minutes to just make it across the page.
You would need at least a 25" monitor to run that.
starter posted this at 17:20 — 12th April 2006.
They have: 80 posts
Joined: Feb 2003
Personally I think depending on what contents we dealing with on particular sites, so far I have avoiding the fuild design altogether, as if my designs were 800x600 I find that its a lot easier and also more consistant to work with, 1024 is the main res at the moment, so I can see why the larger sites have moved on, but most sites never have needs for anything larger then 800x600, with technology moving on everyday and standards changing every now so often, you cant expect to please everyone.
dragonsjaw posted this at 19:03 — 11th April 2006.
She has: 120 posts
Joined: Oct 2000
I've been struggling with this lately.
I am goung for 1024 on this latest site I am working on,
the client uses an ungodly high res and am having difficulty having a fluid workable site in 800 and 1024, it then falls totally apart on her res.
Interesting topic.
I still like fluid, and run at 1024 myself haven't used 800 in years.
But understand the eye strain thing..
a bigger monitor really helped with that..19" is just perfect for me now.
~dragonsjaw
"Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight- 'Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight." - Bruce Cockburn
steve40 posted this at 18:16 — 13th April 2006.
He has: 490 posts
Joined: May 2005
Follow up to post above. Out of all my site meters, of which I have five.
Total Confusion!.
800 x 600 = 10%, 1024 x 768 is dominate at around 37 - 40%.
One meter has an ungodly mix of about a dozen diffrent resolutions up to 1600 x 1240, with 1280 x 960 dominate, 1024 x 768 runner up. This one is my Blue Ridge home page mater.
Busy posted this at 22:31 — 7th April 2006.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
A while back there was the big flash craze, everyone had flash ... the wider screen sizes can be the same thing until something new comes along - we make sites for others, if they don't like/aren't able to use them then they will go elsewhere.
Just back to the news thing for a sec, I get newspaper delivered, they had a good format and covered a lot of stuff but recently they changed format - for the worse. My subscription ends at the end of this month and I wont be renewing it, instead will just stick with online news. I'd rather have with print version but reading the paper should be easy not a mission to find anything, the weather with the death notices?
demonhale posted this at 18:01 — 7th April 2006.
He has: 3,278 posts
Joined: May 2005
I think we shouldnt drop 800x600 just yet... if you can make it work for this res, better, if you absolutely must support only higher res, then its your choice anyways...
Megan posted this at 14:15 — 7th April 2006.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I just think that people have some loyalty to certain papers with high reputations. The NY Times isn't any old news site. Especially if people have been reading the paper version for years and years. Something like Google News is certainly not comparable to a regular newspaper.
Megan
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Megan posted this at 18:48 — 7th April 2006.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
And, to add to that - a change in one site might be tolerable, since they can swtich to an alternative or make do with the way it is. BUT, what happens when more and more sites start going wider? What if someone was a big news junkie and visited both CNN and the NY Times every day? And there will be other sites that decide to do this. It's that sort of build up that might make people change their settings.
Megan
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Busy posted this at 13:17 — 7th April 2006.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
I used to read various news sites then they went all ads and weird sizing so switched to google news
Megan posted this at 02:04 — 7th April 2006.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
It did work for getting rid of Netscape though. And this isn't just any news site we're talking about, this is CNN and the New York Times. There's the whole aspect of reliable news sources to take into consideration. If people are watching CNN all day, they'll want to read the website too. They might even go to greater lengths to do so. I know that it would tkae a lot for me to switch my regular newspaper (it's got a terrible website but I'll put up with it because the cotnent is good).
And who was going to swap banks? That was JeevesBond. Not everyone is like that. Actually, I think a lot of people would put up with the resolution problem until someone showed them how to change it.
___________________________________________
Back to the original question, I think that it might be reasonable to fix widths at 1024 IF you have a really content heavy site (like CNN or the NY Times). However, I wouldn't put important content in that space. It would be good for secondary content areas, special features, things like that. But not key navigation. I don't like the way either of those sites are done, personally. Or, as Tim said, if you were designing for a younger audience or graphic designers or a group you could be sure would run at higher resolutions.
For other sites, there is no reason why you need to use that much space. Flexible works perfectly fine, and stays in tune with the users' needs. I find it kind of odd that some of these usability guru types are fixing their sites at higher resolutions actually. It is harder to do with CSS but who's not up to that challenge?
I do like fixed at 760 or so on sites that don't have a lot of content. Like my personal site for example - it would look too stretched out at higher resolutions because there's not much there. So fixed works well. Although that's probably a heck of a lot of pink on big screens
ETA: my apologies for the sloppy typing!
Megan
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Roo posted this at 01:39 — 7th April 2006.
She has: 840 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
But why used fixed width? If you go with fluid design it'll work at any res.
Roo posted this at 18:19 — 6th April 2006.
She has: 840 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
I'm one who uses 800X to avoid eye strain. Maybe if I had like a 21 inch monitor I'd change, but with a 17 inch, and me literally just a few inches from it, and even wearing bi-focals I have to strain my eyes.
Personally, when I see 800X get down to 2-3 percent I'll make the switch to kicking it aside.
I've actually changed the monitor setting for a few people and they've said "Thank you! I can see it now!!"
The trend is because XP comes with 1024X as default, and so many people do not know they can change it.
I will give up development if screen res minimum goes above 1024X though. 1024X is hard enough for me to work at, higher than that is impossible.
Roo
Megan posted this at 16:38 — 6th April 2006.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Another question to consider: Will the move by major sites like CNN and the NY Times force people to increase their screen resolution? If sites stop working for them, will they switch?
Megan
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Busy posted this at 22:13 — 6th April 2006.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
If sites stop working for them people will switch sites. With trillions of websites out there you could find what you wanted in nearly any flavour. Look at the thread (can't find it) about online banking, wasn't usable in certain browsers so banks were swapped.
I've visited a few sites lately that were fixed big sizes, I needed to print them out, took me all day to modify the code so it would fit on portrait (landscape wasn't wide enough). If the wide site has columns, makes printing even harder. One site (list numbers) was so bad it wouldn't fit on two landscape pages side by side as they had three columns (with heaps of ads on sides as well as navigation) so I am in the process of making my own site on same subject so people can use the info with the ads, without the hassle of only printing bits and making a jigsaw.
Then you have sites that just love .pdf (dang I hate those), at 100% you have to scroll every which way, they are blurry, slow to load, don't always work and converting them to html (helpful hint down bottom for this) can be a real pain, even printing can be locked on them, most can't be modified without 'special tools' to make them fit the print size. resizing to fit the page is unreadable printed.
Tip converting .pdf to html:
If you have a gmail account, send the .pdf file to yourself, get it from your gmail account (don't use outlook etc if forwarded) and choose display in html and your done.
Down side is it uses fixed CSS to build the page, if it's wide it's wide and modifiying everypage is very time consuming.
timjpriebe posted this at 16:10 — 6th April 2006.
He has: 2,667 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
I think it just depends on the site. If your site is primarily for college-age and younger, I don't see any reason to design for 800 x 600, personally.
Tim
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
Megan posted this at 16:01 — 6th April 2006.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
But maybe not. I don't really believe that for sure. A lot of people use it just because they like the text bigger. It's not a matter of better technology or anything like that. It's not the same as browser improvements where people will upgrade eventually. It's more of a preference. I know a few people at work who are at 800 x 600 and refuse to switch. Or there are people like Busy who are just obstinate (kidding - old hardware, I know!).
Funny story: when my mom had her old computer she had it set at 800 x 600. When I used it I would up the resolution to 1024 because I couldn't stand it that small. If I forgot to change it back she'd complain that the font was too small. She didn't understand the concept of resolution - she just saw that the text was smaller after I changed it. When she got her new laptop last year it was set at a bigger resolution (it's widescreen so I'm not sure what the exact resolution is). She didn't even notice!! I even asked and she said no, it's no problem, she didn't notice a difference.
By the way, the counter.com has 800x600 still at 16%. That's pretty high to be dropping support for it IMO. Those can obviously vary from site to site but still...
Megan
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DaveyBoy posted this at 15:46 — 6th April 2006.
They have: 453 posts
Joined: Feb 2003
Well eventually it is going to be phased out but I think it's too early to totally disregard them yet.
Megan posted this at 15:37 — 6th April 2006.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
(Just as a sidenote, for the realignment of this site I very briefly toyed with the idea of going to 1024 just so solve some layout issues, but it would have meant that some of the advertising would be cutt off at 800x600 which was clearly unacceptable.)
Megan
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