[WEB4LIB] resolution

[Thomas Dowling]

>We're in the midst of re-vamping our website and would love to hear what
>people's preference is with regards to resolution.  We're told that 800
>x 600 is fast becoming the norm.  Is this the case or are people still
>developing pages at 640 x 480?
>


Time for the semi-annual resolution thread already? :-)

I stand by the points I made in
<URL:http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive/9810/0101.html>.  In
particular, I would reiterate that any assumptions you make about your
user's viewing environment will be wrong some percentage of the time, and
that authors are obligated to provide pages which remain useful and
comprehensible when this happens (the principal of graceful degradation).

Dismounting briefly from my high horse, I'd offer a rule of thumb that any
combination of fixed width elements that combine to force a page much wider
than 600 pixels is asking for trouble--not because the high end has moved to
800 pixel-wide screens, but because it has moved to 1200 pixel-wide screens
and people are learning to make use of this screen real estate.

Thomas Dowling
Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu