How much longer do you cater for the 800 x 600 screen resolution?

It's been an almost unwritten law that web pages are created for an 800 pix x 600 pix resolution.

Like Web Safe colours at some time this standard will become defunct, as did 640 x 480 resolution standard. But when? Looking at the latest data from HERE it would suggest that by Jan 2009 only 2% of surfers will be using 800 x 600 resolution.

I create sites using 1024 x 768 but give an alternative for lower resolution users.

No bone to pick, just interested in your views.

Personally I don't follow why big screens and larger resolutions should mean web pages should be created to fill the extra space.
I have always thought that a web page should print perfectly on an A4 sheet of paper without any special conditions or 'printer friendly' page creation being necessary.

Large wide-screen monitors simply mean you can view two documents side by side. No need to stretch the document when you can't print it that size in any case.

Have paper back books or newpapers changed in size relative to the improved technology which produces them? Of course not.
If they had, then I'd expect a paperback to be the size of a box of cornflakes by now :eek:

It's more about ergonomics surely.

Of course the rule changes with multi-media flash and online game sites designed to entertain. Like cinema screens, bigger is better ;)

I agree with Steve - Nothing infuriates me more than printing a site to find that most of the important text is not on the page.

That's strange, I've never considered the printing function of a web site (except in Flash as printing can be a problem here). I very rarely do so. Personally I find the restriction of a max width of 770 pixels limiting. The "shrink to fit" option on printing suits my rare printing excursions just fine. I've noticed that more and more big sites are dropping the 800 restriction and moving to a 1024 width. BBC, Ebay etc.

The BBC says 95% of end-users have 1024 or over. I find the concept of printing a web page a bit alien - though I suppose some will want to - but I agree with Steve, if a page is likely to be printed, then A4 is logical.

The best approach is, to design your pages resolution independent. ;)
Ok, ok unfortunately this is not always possible.

Some widths of known websites:

• Firefox website: 950px
• Apple website: 982px
• Microsoft website: 934px

Regards,
Remi

My tracking on my web site still shows 34 percent of visitors using 800 x 600 and the highest percentage is 1024 x 768,
It is possible to make designs that will adapt to any size but can be very tricky and does not always guarantee that it will look right on the users resolution.

I think I will be sticking with 800 x 600 design for sometime.

There was a thread on TG [can't find it, sorry] a short while ago that went into these things and the point was made that many people have bookmarks/favourites open at the side and loads of toolbars at the top so making a page for 1024 x 768, for instance, would mean the user having to scroll horizontaly as well as verticaly, so this should be taken into account too with a width of about 950.

This one
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...9&postcount=79

Hans

Thanks Hans ... see, I did take notice of it :)

Knew you were right,but had to go through my posts to find it :rolleyes:

Hans

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

That's strange, I've never considered the printing function of a web site (except in Flash as printing can be a problem here).

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..and

Quote:

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neodeist: I find the concept of printing a web page a bit alien

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I guess my history has set my opinion in stone. Years ago I won a competition run by a local ISP to design their new website, one of the things was that it had to print gracefully to normal home printers.
All information sites should print to an A4 page in my opinion, they are called web *pages* after all ;)
But seriously, as I see hundreds of home computers users each year and answer their questions about their computing and internet woes it so very often comes up that they get so frustrated trying to print some information they found on a web site (geneology for example is very common amongst older generation users) only to find it doesn't print right on their home A4 printer simply because the site designer hasn't considered this.
It's a fundamental flaw that makes no sense to me.
Websites are morphing into TV style productions now with flash and I suppose Silverlight etc, and it's unlikely that very many people will want to print these multi-media style sites, but basically for information sites we are still talking an online 'magazine' style *publication* with *pages* which can reasonably be expected to print to an A4 sheet of paper. It's obviously a more common requirement of home users than some have realised.
So yes, in my view all websites should be resolution independent rather than fixed.

Incidentally, eBay isn't fixed at 1024 - it will shrink to around 762 - 840 pix before a horizontal scroll bar appears & will print perfectly to an A4 page (though some sellers create html content that can blow it out) as does vBulletin actually, they are resolution independent allowing for printing :) See window width on Opera title bar in screen shot below, which also shows a print preview of the eBay site, perfectly fitting an A4 sheet of paper..

A browser is not fixed width, so web pages should not be fixed width.

I print web pages from time to time. Some times it is much easier to have a printout than bouncing back and forth between tabs or another program.

When I reformatted my hard drive I printed out instructions from several sites. I also print out google maps to take on a trip.

I think really boils down to who your target audience is.

As far as printing goes, I understand people's desire to print, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the web. Why not use a little CSS and JS or such to give them a print option that will fit to a standard page size?

HTML was never really intended to be a fixed specification. As designers and developers, we've done that to it. Back in the day, we used nested tables to accomplish what we wanted with layout. Now it's CSS. The W3C has been accommodating and standardized specifications like CSS etc. that allow us to do this.

I personally do a little of each for my clients, again, depending on who the target audience or demographic is.

There is a huge difference between screen and printing.
Regarding screen, I check the majority of clients that view the current content the customer has. It has to be done again and again for all clients. Banks have completely different customers(hardware/software) than furniture makers and game producers.
If they got cash, produce something good which looks good in all browsers on all platform in any resolution. If budget is tight, focus on main customer profile.

Regarding printing, RedWombat, you pretty much told it all.

Each browser has a print button. Dont implement a print function that will do something different than the browser does until you want to confuse your customers.

Just use what all browsers above Netscape 4 and IE5 support: stylesheets for printing.
Set all parts of the page that are not intended for printing to invisible and youre basically done.

Juergen

PS. I was tempted to delete anything I wrote to just repeat one sentence from RedWombat: "I think really boils down to who your target audience is."
Thats all you have to consider ......

I'd forgotten this thread. Leaving the printing bit aside for the moment it would appear that almost all the big sites have abandoned the 800 pixel width restriction. Even this forum appears to have a minimum width of 916 pixels approx. (BBC 1018 pixels)

So were does that leave the printing/web page ratio situation? Taking the BBC their site @ 1018pix/96ppi = 10.8 inches. Almost the height of an A4 page (11.8"). Yet in modern browsers it's quite simple to select "Shrink to Fit".

So personally I can't see the need to retain the old 800 pixel standard nor to being bound by the limits of an A4 page.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Even this forum appears to have a minimum width of 916 pixels approx.

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How are you determining that Egg?

I'm just narrowing the browser window until the horizontal scroll bar appears. Alt-Print Screen.

Paste into XX and measure the window width.

Quote:

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Taking the BBC their site @ 1018pix/96ppi = 10.8 inches. Almost the height of an A4 page (11.8"). Yet in modern browsers it's quite simple to select "Shrink to Fit".

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In fact if you visit the BBC site and do a print preview set to 100% it just fits on a landscape A4 allowing for print margins.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

I'm just narrowing the browser window until the horizontal scroll bar appears. Alt-Print Screen.

Paste into XX and measure the window width.

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Like this 627 pix wide pic?? :rolleyes:

Attachment 51749

It's going to depend on a bit more than that I think Egg.

Yes your correct Steve, with TG it depends on the image width on the page. So it is possible to reduce a text only screen to quite a narrow window. But that doesn't negate the question. Images are as much part of web sites as text.

Try the same excercise with BBC, CNN or Ebay web sites. They are made to be between 850 to 1026 pixels wide. In otherwords they've abandoned the 800 (770) pixel width limitation in favour of more screen real estate for nav bars etc.

As far as I can see most designers don't even design with a minimum page size in mind.

The software adjusts the webpage to 100%. The minimum page width is then set to the width of the biggest graphic. And in a lot of cases that's just been inserted at a size that was convenient.

Personally I prefer to limit all my graphics to a maximum of 500 pixels wide.

Hi all,

to me, the 800x600 resolution is out, though there are users still on it, in general it's a thing of the past.

having said that, it really boils down to who your target audience is.

My Company develop websites for people, and we generally keep a 960x600 basic dimension for any site with fixed width & height, and 960px x any-height for a non fixed height site. However, if you know that your audience is all going to be reading your site say on a 640x480 screen, then, by all means design your site to that, because those are who your site should be talking to anyway.

we develop Intranet & Internet application for our clients too. here, since its in an controlled environment, and we get to supply/specify the specification in which our application best (or in most cases, will only) work in, we go to which ever size that is required to get the job done.

one thing we do have to remember, the sites we do is for our reader/audiences, that's all it matters.

=)

NgeeJee.