Screen size to design for?

What screen size should I design for?

  • 640 x 480

  • 800 x 600

  • 1024 x 768

  • 1280 x 1024

  • Flexible to all sizes - resolution independent

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Jason

Jason

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What screensize do you guys think i should design for? Currently my design (jasonharbourdesign.com) is made with 800x600 users in mind, but to me it seems a bit small... what do you guys think?
 
I use 800x600 normally as well. Nothing is more painful than horizontal scrolling to read something. :)
In US you have in media bigger screens - I see the differences in some statistics.
 
My site is 800x600, and that's how it will stay, always. :) BUT it also stretches to fit the window. The minimum size is 800x600.
 
I recall a discussion about this on a designer forum a few months ago, we came to a conclusion that by designing for 800x600 everybody can get the "big picture", because a lot of users these days actually do have resolutions of 800x600. Me for example.
 
I usually design for 1024x600.
But, I put all of the main content in the 800x600 section of the page and any other content in the extra space.
 
I think, and this is just my uneducated opinion, that it likely depends on your intended audience for the site.

For a site that is geared toward graphic designers-likely computer savy people-designing for larger screen sizes is not only ok, but it some cases preferable.

However, some sites are geared more towards a less computer-savy community. In this situation designing for larger screen sizes would be counter productive. Designing for 800, or even 640, might actually be more beneficial.

I only say all this because I have many older friends that find my computer screen size to small to see. They keep theirs at 800x600, and yes, I have a couple that even use 640x480. Designing a site that I wanted them to be able to view would require me to adjust accordingly.

Later.
 
Our web design company designs at 750x450. We feel that most people (general public not computer geeks ;) ) browse at 800x600 and we want to give them a little room for toolbars, scrollbars, and the like.
 
As a user who runs at 1280x1024 and who's hardware goes to 11! (well 1920x1440 ;)) Let me plead for you not to fix things so that they will not scale to higher resolutions. There is many an e-commerce site that has lost my business because I could not make out the stupid 8 pixel font they were using.

So where is the fifth choice "I design my sites to be resolution independent" :)

-Eric
 
good idea lurk but what about those people who have 640 x 480 screens? Wouldn't that make the site hell for them?

I understand that some people have HUGE resolutions and some have small resolutions. It makes it hard to design. I prefer not to design things not to scale up because it causes sites to look worse due to the fact that there is not enough content to fill that large of an area.

That just my opinion though.
 
Originally posted by twister
good idea lurk but what about those people who have 640 x 480 screens? Wouldn't that make the site hell for them?
Click to expand...

Well... that is why I said scale and to be fair I surf at about 800x700 when you take into account that I don't run with the browser window full screen.


I understand that some people have HUGE resolutions and some have small resolutions. It makes it hard to design. I prefer not to design things not to scale up because it causes sites to look worse due to the fact that there is not enough content to fill that large of an area.
Click to expand...

I am of the mind that you should just scale up your content then. Just because I am viewing your web page at a higher resolution does not mean that I am giving it any more of my visual area as at a lower resolution. Maybe all I want from a higher resolution is crisper fonts.

As an interesting parallel think about printers. I have moved form an old 9-pin dot matrix printer up to 2400 dpi laser printer. Does that mean I should put a thousand times more text on a page? Why should display technology be any different?

Just a wonderin'
-Eric

P.S. It is nasty cold out today isn't it.
 
Yes it's cold.

Ok just out of curiosity, am i missing something. What do you mean by scale up? I'm thinking in the mind set that you scale a window and if a table is 100% it scales up with the wiindow (like MACOSX.com). Can you do that with text to? So the text gets bigger with the window?
 
Most PC users I have found use 800x600. This is not because they can't have large resolutions, it is because many of their apps are designed so that they only go full screen at 800x600 (and they can deal with apps that aren't full screen).

I actually know PC people with beautiful 19" monitors running at 800x600 because of this.

Personally, I make all my browser windows to about 800x600 so that they cascade nicely when I have a number of them open. As a Mac user I'm used to multitasking, so I can't stand a window taking over most of my screen.
 
Originally posted by twister
Yes it's cold.

Ok just out of curiosity, am i missing something. What do you mean by scale up? I'm thinking in the mind set that you scale a window and if a table is 100% it scales up with the wiindow (like MACOSX.com). Can you do that with text to? So the text gets bigger with the window?
Click to expand...

If the text sizes are specified in points or just relatively then I can scale it up in my browser just fine. for instance in Safari you can just use CMD+ and CMD- to change the base font size and all is peachy. The problem comes when someone specifies text or tables in pixels and overrids my preference then things break.

Small fonts are also annoying on my Unix boxes which use free TrueType or Postscript font engines that don't do low resolution font hinting( for patent reasons.) Under those conditions any 8 pixel font is going to be fairly illegible.

Honestly things have gotten much better in recent years but whenever I see "Our site best viewed at 640x400" I am racked with flashbacks of squinting at some tiny text the designer saw fit to prevent my enlarging or god forbid rendered as a gif...shudder...

Have fun,

-Eric
 
I wouldn't get too hung up on screen size. As someone else pointed out, not everyone runs their browser full screen. Also, why build a site to an exact pixel size if the content would fit just as well in a browser window that was 20 pixels smaller (or wider for that matter) than you had planned.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: if at all possible use a flexible design/layout that can adapt to the users browser size - whatever it might be.

This is slowly getting easier with better CSS support but I appreciate is still a painful process.

One thing that I can never understand is where a site is approx. 820 pixels wide!!! Those extra few pixels really aren't necessary and they are making those people that are at 800x600 definitely get a horizontal scroll bar, even at full screen. I see this quite a lot and it never fails to amaze me.

P.S. I didn't vote as there was no option for 'design for all sizes'.
 
goynang, lurk, et al. - there is now an option for resolution independent so we can vote. i've already cast the first one there.

i'll add that i really only think this matters with professional sites. low level homepage designers like myself will continue to be satisfied with just getting a page up and viewable - how pretty to the last detail is way down the list of priorities in such a case. i'll spend my efforts making it easy to navigate, but other than that, i probably make all my fonts too big for younger eyes tastes anyway. i like to be able to see my sites even if nobody else does. :p
 
"Resolution independent" sites with taags such as <table="70%"> are longer to load. I thought this ought to be precised.
 
making a resolution independent site gives me less flexibility as a designer though, no?

and what happens when they have a small window, everything will get squished together and unreadable, id rather have them scroll then not beable to navigate...

as far as fonts, i always make my fonts pts based, all you have to do is press command +... also if you cant read a normal size font because of your resolution then IMHO the resolution isnt doing you much good ;)
 
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