PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

A lot of members have their own web pages - what screen resolutions you use to develop your web sites please?
Any comments and tips gratefully received

1024x768 is the standard minimum res these days...

800x600 is dead and buried (hurray!)

I wonder why the BBC still work to an 800px wide, left-aligned page size... http://www.bbc.co.uk/ For laptop users with smaller screens maybe?

proper page adjustment and screen resolution on web pages is like finding the holy grail ....
you could make a fortune with an easy solution, two fortunes...

cheers, Tom

Ups... this is a big one... There are many important and complex ways and reasons behind the chosen screen resolution to build a page, and there are many tricks you can apply to make them adjust, too. Some people would build two or even three versions of the same page, so you can choose one to start with when you go to their idex.htm.

Husker, unless you are talking about a specific country, like USA, your statement about 800 X 600 is not completely true.

800 X 600 is still the resolution used in the world, as a whole. Professionals tend to use and recommend it for business pages, if they are to be seen in many languages. It is true nevertheless, that there is a huge increase of the 1024 X 768, and that it will soon take the place, but it did not happened yet.

For you Neil I would recommend going with a resolution of 1024 X 768 as recommended by Husker, because your page is in English and it is not a commercial one, definitely, and without fear to mistake, go for it.

Yes, 800x600 still clings on in some parts, but less and less.

The major news site in New Zealand (http://www.stuff.co.nz/) recently updated it's site, and requires minimum 1024x768, for 800x600 you get to scroll horizonally too!

They even provide instruction on how to set the resolution on your PC to 1024x768, as I think there is actually a large number of PC's quite capable of running 1024x768, but are stuck on 800x600 due to user ignorance.

Also, a question for Neil B is who is the site targetted at? If it's for music related PC users, then I can't image anyone would be using 800x600...

Personally I recommend 1024x768 to all of my clients. Anyone stuck at 800x600 in this era has to put up with a lot more than just your webpage, and so imo will be used to dealing with such issues, while users of modern resolutions will find 800x600 quite limiting when trying to navigate your site. Also that BBC actually still would not fit into a maximized web browser at 800x600 once the scrollbar was active, which it definately is with any content beyond a single headline & summary.

I've done work for some very high traffic sites (30 millions hits/month+) and have had access to their stats. Across almost all sites the stats were about the same: 10 - 15% on 800x600, the vast majority on 1024, about 10 - 15% on 1280 and a few % above that on a mix of resolutions.

As a rule I'd develop for 1024, but keep in mind that many people will have their favorites list always open on the left-side of the browser.

Thanks for all your replies to date - just the sort of discussion that I was after.

Husker asks "Also, a question for Neil B is who is the site targetted at? If it's for music related PC users, then I can't image anyone would be using 800x600..."

I've put up a really new rough demo of the site that I plan.
Basically my ISP gives me 50Mb for a website so there'll be:
Some photos
Some music (MP3's)
Some of my wife's watercolour paintings (photos naturally - the paint tends to make a mess of the screens)
Some bike rides in Scotland (text plus photos)
Links to other sites and a few other things

Basically nothing flashy, nothing commercial.

I'd be grateful if you guys could look at the rough and ready demo I've uploaded this morning to see if it works on your screens/pc's. All feedback will be helpful I'm sure.
If you wish to test the email too (it's a second email account purely for the website) I'd be grateful.

http://homepages.tesco.net/~n.buxton/album2.htm

Chris Werner - hope you didn't mind me linking to your site for our Mars track - saved me 8Mb

Again thanks to you all so far