Wide Vs. Narrow Design - The Screen Resolution War
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Mike Richard June 13, 2006
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Mike Richard |
Mike Richard is an eight year veteran of sensible web
design/development and creative director for a Rhode Island-based tech
firm. His keen insight is matched only by his dashing good looks and
witty sense of humor. He blogs about life at www.mrichard.net and politics at www.jayseverinhasissues.com.
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Mike Richard
has written 1 articles for WebKnowHow. |
View all articles by Mike Richard... |
One of the first and most critical decisions web and user
interface (UI) designers must face when designing for a fixed screen
resolution is whether to design for the classic, narrow screen
resolution of 800×600 pixels or the newer, now-more-commonplace
resolution of 1024×768 pixels (and above). The decision is not as simple, nor as trivial as it sounds.
Design too wide (1024×768 pixels and above) and you risk shutting
out a portion of your demographic as valuable content and ad space sit
out of view to the right of their browser window. Plus, your users will
typically see the dreaded horizontal scrollbar!
Design too narrow (800×600 pixels) and you risk wasting valuable
screen real estate in the afore-mentioned right-hand side with many
users seeing nothing but your lovely page background filling 25% of
their brand new 19″ (or larger) monitors.
The web is at a crossroads right now. There are still those waiting
to make the leap from 800×600 screen resolution to 1024×768 (and
above). But with the advent of larger monitors and better graphic
cards, that number is dwindling every day. As recent as last year, the
majority of users - 80% or more - were running 800×600 screen
resolutions. That statistic has largely flipped and now many large
scale sites are eschewing the 800×600 spec and designing for the future
(i.e. 1024×768):
- www.cnn.com
- www.espn.com
- www.nytimes.com
There are lies, damn lies - and statistics. - Mark Twain
Statistics often fail to prove much, if anything. That said, I’ve
worked for almost a decade within the WWW community. My company’s
clients span virtually every industry, catering to a broad range of
demographics. In looking at our site statistics at hand, roughly 15-25%
of our clients users are running 800×600, with the remainder of folks
experiencing the web in the larger, 1024×768 (and up) format.
Twenty-five percent - a minority, but a sizable minority at that - is
certainly nothing to sneeze at. But that number will likely half in the
next 6-9 months and continue to decline sharply thereafter.
Of course now you’re asking, “How do I know what resolution my users
are running?” Fortunately, that information is often right at your
finger tips in the form of your own web server logs. Your website
administrator or webmaster can you help with this. If you do not have a
webmaster per se, or are your own webmaster, ask your website host how
to get access to your web logs. One other option is to use an
all-purpose tracking script. I love StatCounter.com’s offering - the
administrative panel provides a wealth of invaluable information that
no website owner can do without. Best of all, it’s free!
The bottom line is that this decision, as with many design and UI
decisions, is largely dependent on your demographic. An older, less
computer savvy audience will likely experience the web via the classic
800×600 screen resolution. A younger and/or more affluent demographic
will likely prove just the opposite - with newer computers and larger
monitors, these folks are almost certainly viewing the web via higher
screen resolutions. |