An experiment on the screen resolution issue
Brent’s post on site stats vs. generally accepted “truth” got me thinking.
With any project you have to begin somewhere, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable in 2007 to design a site like Refresh for 1024×768+. The minority who are still using screens at 800×600 will just have to scroll a little bit – something I’m sure they’re quite used to doing.
That’s my judgment call, and on my head be it. But what about down the line? What if a year into the site’s life my stats tell me another story? I usually design webpages from a Photoshop template that I created some time ago. It shows the available space at 800×600 without scrolling (which I have determined to be 760×420), and at 1024×768 (960×590). I think it’s time to update that template.
I looked at my Mint stats, specifically the Real Estate pepper, which lists a breakdown of the window widths visitors are using. Now, the stats for my site are immature (because the site is so new), but this post is about the exercise…
I expanded the document size to cover a screen resolution of 1600×1200, added my space markers as before, then blacked out the background. I drew in blocks of white (punching out the smaller blocks from each layer) which indicate the listed dimensions in Real Estate. I then set their opacity to reflect the usage.
What comes out is a rather interesting little snapshot of the actual use of my site, compared against the spaces I might choose to work into.
Download a GIF version (50k) or the layered Photoshop file (120K ZIP).
I think it would be illuminating to do this exercise every three months, and use it to inform redesigns of a website. I’m also tempted to make a Flash version that displays live stats from a Mint database.
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March 1st, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Going to throw a spanner in the works…
Remembered I signed up for google analytics so I could get some resolution data for FD. It is only a couple of months worth, so can’t say it is anywhere near indicative, but I have a LOT of laptop viewers using nonstandard screen resolutions (1280 x 800,1680×1050) and while that doesn’t affect the 800×600 versus 1024×768 debate, it is very much worth noting that while we talk of the traditional 4:3 dimensions, not everyone is using that.
March 1st, 2007 at 2:56 pm
I don’t think that’s a spanner in the works. It’s not even surprising - it’s completely natural and obvious. The human field of vision is wide, so I’d expect 4:3 displays to eventually disappear altogether.
Even the most cursory glance at that PSD shows that many people are viewing the web on either wide-aspect displays or simply having wide windows.
If people are using laptops at resolutions like 1280×800, then happy days