What screen resolution do you aim your websites for?

I’ve been wondering recently what resolution new websites are being developed for.

Do people still develop for 800 x 600 resolution screen, or are people now assuming the majority of their website visitors are running 1024 x 768?

I don’t think monitor size has an overwhelming relevance anymore, and even if you develop a dynamic width site you still have to assume the minimum width for a webpage.

But what guides you to deciding on a minimum width? Do you prefer dynamic width, or static?

I would really be interested in your views.

Dynamic Width. 1024x768.

Lowest common denominator. I am a huge fan of http://www.csszengarden.com, and have contributed a few styles, and the grim reality is many internet users still use IE, and have monitors with resolutions set at 800x600. A web design that will display properly at 800x600 and uses {margin:0 auto;} will look great at 800x600 as well as any size above that. A site designed graphically to display at 1024x768 will have horrible horizontal scroll bars in the viewport of a user set to 800x600. I am just a huge fan of standards compliance and trying to make sure everyone sees the same thing. If you know that all your visitors have at least 1024x768, or you don’t really care if the 800x600 crowd (probably a good portion of the world outside US,UK) can’t see your site the way you intended it you should probably design for 1024x768. The choice is up to the designer, but like I said, I really dig universal web standards and lowest common denominator. I think it would be cool if in a later revision of the CSS standard, or possibly just a JavaScript function, there was a screen resolution check so you could potentially load a different css for different screen resolutions.

here are some guidelines from ZenGarden:
* Have you tested in as many browsers as you can? Windows and Mac? (a good answer: yes)
* Can you scale your fonts up to 150% in Mozilla? (a good answer: yes)
* Do you get a horizontal scrollbar at 800x600? (a good answer: no)


-sD-

Dynamic, 800 x 600.

I clicked wrong and am unable to change my vote :-(

Quote from: mina at Dec 07, 2005, 03:40 AM

Dynamic, 800 x 600.

I clicked wrong and am unable to change my vote :-(

Ok, I’ve changed the Poll to make it more accurate.... my bad. Who creates 640 x 480 websites anyway! LOL!

Always a hot topic and I think there is no simple answer. It depends on the project, audience and what the purpose of the site is.

That said, the goal should be to develop a site that looks good at 1024x768 (Current most popular standard) that will also work (without horizontal scrolling at 800 x 600). Beyond 1024 it can be advantageous to limit the maximum width I feel. Why?, simply to stop the text lines getting to long and thus more difficult to read. For a good example of this approach see www.mozilla.org which allows the design to scale to 800 x 600 but stop at 1024.

The problem with a fixed 800 x 600 design is that for many users with 1024 or higher res displays they will be frustrated. For example this forum page you are looking at now. Set your browser to 800 x 600, would you prefer that size or the freedom you have right now to change your own browser size to suit the way you want to display this forum.(I suspect the second - after all were designing for what suits the user, in this example, you)

However, the advantage of 800 x 600 fixed designs is that from a designers point of view you have total control, graphics can be placed pixel perfect without worrying about the user messing up your lovely design. And you can ensure perfect line lenghts for your text relative to the font size. Of course creating nice templates for a fixed width design is easier than creating one for a fluid layout.

For 2006 I think you will see web designers moving away from putting content into a 2 or 3 column rigid layouts where the wrapper is seen as the typical 760px wide container. Instead designs will see the browser viewport as the total design space, and thus there will be more full width and creative solutions with careful use of margins to apply the perfect amount of white space either side to create a nicely balanced layout that is pleasant, easy to navigate and where the template design does not distract the visitor from the actual content. There may be even be more use of CSS style switching to give the visitor the freedom to set their own design / layout preferences and this could include a low graphics, fixed width or fluid layout.

Where designers will change habits with graphics will be the use of new effects that make web sites behave more like desktop applications with richer user interfaces and menus that fade or slide to create a more engaging overall experience