Hey everybody, whats your take on the smallest screen resolution a web designer should design for? I've been taught that in general, you want to design for 800 x 600, but do you think that is still the case given how relatively inexpensive better computers & monitors are these days?

It kinda depends on your target audience. If you run an online newspaper for example, you'd want as many as possible to be able to surf the site without a horizontal scroll.

1024x768 is probably the most common resolution these days, and a layout for 800x600 doesn't get too much empty space at 1024x768. If you have a large amount of visitors you'd want everyone to be able to see it at 800x600 too, because just 1% could mean thousands of people. A centered layout for 800x600 would not be a problem for me allthough i'm on 1280x1024, because i rarely surf with my browser in full screen mode/maximized. But if you can use % values rather than absolute/px values to define width, that's even better because it makes the layout fit all resolutions.

I don't know if this answered anything, just waking up here. :D

I still do.

Interesting Article:

http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_trends.htm#res

The still design some of my sites to work at 640x480, and look good at 800x600 to 1024x768. This really only works well if you are doing liquid layouts, and when I say they work at 640x480, it by no means says that they look good, they just work.

Even now with so few users using 640x480, why would I worry about it? Well, a couple reasons. One is that smaller computing devices such as handhelds are reaching the point of running at vga resolution. As the popularity of these devices increases we may see a trend of sites shifting back to designing for smaller screens again, or designing to versions. Also, sites that are design to work in 800x600 usually don't look good at that resolution, everything seems crammed, sometimes. (I have an old 14 inch monitor on my wifes compy, and it has to run at 800x600 so I get a good dose of reality sometimes when I use hers)

Thats just some sites though. Others I do at 800x600, especially when I'm using a fixed width layout (or SD does the design [rock and roll doggy]). I guess what it boils down to is doing a bit of research into your target audience and seeing what works.

One more thing to consider, many people with larger screen resolutions do not run maximized browsers. For example, right now my browser canvas area is 768x777, and it will probably fluctuate throught the day. I don't really want to resize my browser to fit your site, so unless there is something really important on a site that I need, I'll probably look somewhere else next time.

At work I still design for a lowest common denominator of 800x600, but that's only because I design for clients that are stuck with old monitors (with old graphics cards in their old PCs). When I design for fun or for freelance clients, my baseline is 1024x768 (unless said freelance client were to demand 800x600, and that never happens.) :)

I agree that all this depends on what your target audience is.
I design most of my sites for 800*600 users though :)

I don't design specifically for 800 x 600 but I do keep an eye on new layouts in all resolutions. Although my new monitor doesn't let me go down to 640 x 480. :(

Thanks a lot for all the great info. I still design sites for 800 x 600 and make sure that it looks good at other resolutions, but since I'm still in school, I just wasn't sure what the practice was in the work place.

Although my new monitor doesn't let me go down to 640 x 480. :(

That sucks! I don't know how I could live with that.

Although my new monitor doesn't let me go down to 640 x 480. :(

This is why I use Firefox's WebDeveloper extension :D
http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/


You can easily resize your browser to the exact dimension of any resolution with just two clicks!

I love firefox. The live http headers extension is also a useful one when doing funky file stuff with php: http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

I love firefox. The live http headers extension is also a useful one when doing funky file stuff with php: http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/


ooh very nice :D
I used to use the web developer extension to view headers as well but this extension looks nicer for this sort of thing :grin2:

I'm rather late on this but I'll reply anyways. I agree with everyone, it depends on your target audience. I check my stats, which lists the percentages of browsers and browsers sizes. Even though 1024 and 1280 are now dominating my stats, I still do design in 800 width in mind.