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Support for 800X600...

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:24 pm
by JellyFish
Hey, would supporting 800x600 screen res' be probable? Does anyone still use this setting? If so, then why?

I'm thinking of only supporting surfers with 1024x768 and up, because the site will look lame any smaller. 1024x768 is the dominate resalution, do people with 800x600 have access to to 1024x768 resalutions?

Thanks for reading my post. I appreciate all help with this.

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:53 pm
by Oren
Yes, people still use this resolution. In my opinion - you must support it.
It won't look lame in anyone of the modern browsers who support web standards (that would be pretty much any browser except IE6 :P ). Why it won't? Because of the min and max-width properties. To see an example, check http://www.dynamized.com/dyn/. Does it look lame on 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 or anything else? Not to me :wink:

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:02 pm
by feyd
If possible, it should work in many resolutions.. even 640x480 and lower. Why lower? Mobile browsers.

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:40 pm
by onion2k
Designing for multiple target resolutions is hard work. I aim to make all my sites work in 800, but I'm not too bothered if things don't line up as neatly as they do in 1024 and above.

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:54 pm
by nickvd
I'm starting to ignore 8x6 unless the site design lends it self to a fluid style layout.

For the longest time, I've always designed either completely fluid layouts, or 800x600 layouts. However, I recently noticed that yahoo is no longer supporting 800x600. If a site such as yahoo no longer supports it, perhaps it's time to stop.

The longer we cater to those 800x600 users, the longer they will exist.


That being said, I try my hardest to design fluid sites that will work on virtually any resolution.

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 6:12 pm
by JellyFish
Well, my site isn't intended to run on moble browsers. And I kinda agree with nickvd, I don't wish to cater with the smaller resolutions. I will just inform the client that the web-page is intended to run on 1024X768 screen res, they'd have to switch to higher resolutions.

Thanks for all the replies guys. Out.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:47 pm
by Kieran Huggins
check your apache logs with a log analyzer (they're pre-installed on most hosts) they usually have a list of your audience's broswers, OSes and resolutions

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:01 pm
by Ollie Saunders
People do still use 800x600. People still use old computers with old OSes. The reasons for this can be financial, a perceived lack of need, perhaps they haven't been shown an alternative or maybe they prefer 800x600 simply because it makes everything bigger. Not everybody has youthful eyesight.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:27 pm
by superdezign
That's true. When I use certain people's computers, I end up upping the resolution. Not everyone is even aware that their video card can handle more than 800x00. Then there are people who's video cards cannot. :-p

However, I'm sure they've gotten used to horizontal scrolling by now. :lol:

Seriously though, We try to avoid horizontal scrolling, even on 800x600. We either use percentages and test in both resolutions, or we make our container width about 740px-780px.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:02 pm
by Oren
onion2k and nickvd, don't get mad, but what you said is a complete nonsense. Since lack of time and since I don't won't to argue about such simple and fundamental thing, I'm not going to get into a debate... Just read a little bit more usability & accessibility articles :wink:

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:11 pm
by ckh
I think it depends on the target audience. JellyFish said that he was supporting 'surfers' so I would have to assume the target audience would be rather large range of resolutions.

If your site was targeting graphic artists or people that manipulate photo's, for example, I would expect them to have high end equipment and have higher resolution and design accordingly.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 5:22 pm
by superdezign
Well what about "newbies" to a graphic artists site? Traffic is traffic.

That's the only reason W3C talks about accessibility; It's like displaying a really nice website for Firefox users, and then just displaying the phrase "Get Firefox" on your page for IE users.

... Okay, not quite THAT brutal, but you get the point.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 5:39 pm
by m3mn0n
nickvd wrote:If a site such as yahoo no longer supports it, perhaps it's time to stop.

The longer we cater to those 800x600 users, the longer they will exist.
I couldn't agree more.

You just get so much more room to work with content-wise if it's a complex and large site.

If it's a matter of text being read in a column that's more wide, well I'd say make it fluid. But for content-heavy sites, 1024 should be the new standard.

Another thing to keep in mind is people often have resolutions *larger* than 1024x768 so by designing for 800x600 it really doesn't sit well with that crowd. And you know, in some circles, the crowd of people at >1024 is actually more than what's <1024.

And if you really look at it in the below scale representation, the size difference as you can see is truly significant:

Image

Just look at all that screen real estate not being used. Just something to think about.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 7:08 pm
by Kieran Huggins
My point earlier was to design for both your content and your audience.

You know your content, and you can use traffic stats to figure out who your audience is.

It's not always appropriate to design for 800x600, or 640x480, or any resolution. Web standards and good semantics can go a long way toward making your site more accessible, but don't betray your content for the tools.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 7:15 pm
by superdezign
We could always give our navigation and such min-width properties, and allow the content to expand with the browser through percentages. Just a thought that makes sense. :wink: