Hi everyone,

I have been searching high and low for research on what is the best screen size to design websites to.

I have a client who wants to build to 1024 x 768 (minus some for toolbars etc.) and have asked for research to either support or dismiss this view.

I personally have been building sites for 10 years and would not recomment the move to a higher size (yet) I would go as far as making sure that all navigation and vital elements fell within the 760 we normally design to and make all text columns expandable so that on larger screens the content would fill.

So any help, pointers to existing research much appreciated.

Regards

Phil

Thanks for the pointers.

I did look at your white paper which quoted W3 Schools data which we already had plus I have found some other resourses which I will share with you once complete today. Maybe a white Paper in it as this info is pretty rare witout a great deal of digging.

Thanks again and I will be sure to check out your pointers.

Regards

Phil

By designing a website for a specific screen size you are actually discriminating against people who don't meet your specific requirements - would a shop owner on the high street stand outside and stop customers who weren't exactly 6ft tall from entering? The answer is no, so why should they take this approach online?! Potential loss in revenue should be the carrot here.

Why?
Today there is less need to make special allowances for hardware limitations for desktop displays - BUT many similar considerations should be kept in mind for the following reasons: 

Accessibility. For instance, the fact that virtually every monitor sold today can support millions of colors doesn't make it possible for color blind users to distinguish all colors. For more guidance in this area, check out the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.

Although a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 is predominant in the US, Europe, and Japan, smaller screen sizes such as 800 x 600 may still be common. Flexible design approaches help significantly in addressing such differences these days. On the other hand, there are also a lot of other devices (PDAs, mobile devices,...) with much more restrictive screens. Although not all Web pages may need to work on mobile devices, try to design with as few limitations as possible.

Characters in other scripts may still take up more room vertically and horizontally. Although screen real estate tends to be more flexible these days, you should still allow for greater line heights, character complexity, and inter-line spacing where necessary.

So, even though hardware variations across locales are not much of an issue now, the same sort of measures are often still needed, though for different reasons.

Also, use relative rather than absolute units in markup language attribute values and style sheet property values.

On 14:41:08 27 July 2005 wicksie wrote:

...why not make the design fluid using CSS for layout?

...this will bridge the gap between the perceived future and the present, as the user enlarges their browser window the design flows and enlarges with it

...to still be designing for a limited perceived screen size in 2005 is to be brutally honest archaic - you will find that your site is more browser friendly in the long run too

Cheers

Wicksie

...and don't forget that screen resolution is only the start of your problem. Then you need to consider the menus and pop-outs which the user has on display while browsing your site. (and then there are the portal/frameset issues)....

At the risk of pluging our product - speed-trap's Prophet records not the screen resolution but the screen area within which the content is being viewed. This has provided our customers with some real eye-openers when it comes to design... You would not imagine the number of user who clearly run with the search or history pop-outs showing in IE, thus significantly changing not only the size but the aspect ratio....

However, the good news is that with the ClickMap's the same product provides you can understand if this restricted window is actually impacting browsing behaviour...

Malcolm Duckett
(VP Operations speed-trap Limited)