[WEB4LIB] Screen Resolution Settings

[Walt Crawford]

>I have some stats on people who've been looking at sections of the  site
but has
>anyone come across any statistics or research about how many people have
each
>resolution generally on the 'Net? I've tried a few search engines but not
come up
>with anything really useful as yet

The best information about the Net isn't always readily available on the
Net. Seems to me I saw a table in The Industry Standard (although it could
have been PC Magazine) based on some heavy-duty sampling of actual Web use
and/or survey work.

Most Web users are running at 800x600 (I think it was considerably more
than half of all reports, but I don't have the article handy).

The curve tails off sharply on the left side (there are still quite a few
640x480, but obviously not much smaller than that) and considerably less
sharply on the right side (lots of 1024x768; relatively few 1280x1024;
almost none higher than that).

Then again, with the growing dominance of IE, even with maximized windows
the real width is only about 80% of the screen width (given the left-side
navigation panel--sure, you can turn it off, but...)

I'm not one of our key Web implementers, but the general rule here is to
optimize for 800x600, make sure the pages are still attractive & useful at
640x480, and make as many things non-pixel-specific as possible. And, of
course, to recognize that people are a lot more willing to scroll
vertically than horizontally--that, in fact, most people seem not even to
be aware that a horizontal scroll bar is  there when it pops up. As a rule
of thumb, I'd never *require* that a visible window be more than about 400
pixels wide.

Then again, I'm writing this from home, running at 1280x1024 (but with the
favorites column open)...two deltas over on the probability curve