[WEB4LIB] resolution

[David Merchant]

>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?

To me it still makes sense to design a "general public" page for 640 x 480
for several reasons: 

1.  while 800 x 600 is gaining popularity, it'll be a long time before
there will be no one at a smaller resolution than it.  Old monitors/graphic
cards/computers still exist in large numbers, and some people will always
prefer the 640 x 480 screen size/resolution (easier to see the
icons/text/etc).

2. even at 800 x 600 resolution, not everyone with that resolution will
open their browser to full window.  In fact, not a small number of folk
like the higher resolutions so that they can have their browser open and
have, say, a HTML editor opened beside it where they can see both windows
at the same time.  Their browser, while opened on a 800 x 600 resolution
monitor, is not opened to full screen and may actually be approximating a
full screen 640 x 480 or less!

3.  A web browser on a Mac does not default to full screen when opening,
and many Mac people I know don't full screen their browser.

4. WebTV may have, by year 2000,  6 million users (so it is predicted).
The resolution/screen size of the WebTV browser is even less than 640 x
480.  And even if WebTV doesn't make the prediction of 6 million users by
next year, it will still grow in number of users where you will have to
take those users into consideration when desiging a webpage for the general
public.  (I think what is helping it's growth recently is the introduction
of WebTV Plus which allows one to search TV schedules a week at a time,
searching by show title, or by favortie actor,  or type of show, etc and
then very easily program it to remind you of the program, or to
autmotically tune the TV to that show when it comes on, or to automatically
record it, which makes the Prevue channel or a TV Guide clumbersome and
obsolete.  This feature alone is winning fans, and as you can tell I've
fallen in love with it!  It can also do screen captures from VCR tapes and
email them.).

Anyway, even with 800 x 600 gaining popularity, there will still be a
fairly large number of folk that will not have their browser open to 800 x
600.  I would design my pages to collapse down and still be
readable/useable at as small a brower window size as possible.  Takes extra
work, I will admit, and not many organizations still seem to realize how
much work their webmaster(s) must do to make a page work and look good
across differing platforms/browsers.

TTFN,
David Merchant
Systems Librarian, Louisiana Tech University  <www.latech.edu/tech/library/>
javascript list administrator  <www.mountaindragon.com/javascript>
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