monitor resolution - followup

[Kevin Justie]

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question yesterday about the
"popularity"
of different monitor resolutions.  Many excellent design considerations
were mentioned; presumably you've seen the reponses since most were sent to
the list, so there's no need to summarize them here, but I did want to
clarify one factor that I think is relevent to page design in general (and
to apologize for not making my question clearer in the first place!)

Most, if not all, of the respondents assumed I asked the question in order
to find out how WIDE I could make my pages. In fact, when we redisigned our
site last year we went to great pains to make sure our pages were just as
usable at 640x480 as at higher resolutions, even to the point of having our
server send out different widths of one set of graphics for one particular
browser version that had problems with the full-size graphics.

My question was asked, rather, to get a feeling for the HEIGHT of user's
windows, and how much content is visible on the first screen.  We've never
received any complaints, even from our own staff who, in fact, do mostly
use 14" 640x480-only monitors, but began to wonder recently if
smaller-monitored users might be annoyed by the fact that the banner
graphic at the top of our pages takes up about 40% vertically of a 640x480
screen.  (If you'd like to offer an opinion (please send to me, not to the
list), our site is at www.webrary.org (see any page other than the home
page and site map).)  While this type of discussion *is* usually related to
the very desirable goal of keeping pages narrow enough to work at lower
resolutions, I think window height is also an important factor since,
supposedly, many users move on if what they're looking for isn't on, or
obviously linked from, a page's first screen.

Thanks again for the quick responses!



Kevin Justie
Head of Technical and Automated Services
Morton Grove Public Library, Morton Grove, IL
(847) 965-4220
kjustie at mgk.nslsilus.org
http://www.webrary.org/
Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect
official Library policy.

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