[Web4lib] web page layout in different monitors and browsers

[Thomas Dowling]

On 7/3/2007 3:22 PM, Thomas Dowling wrote:

> 
> On 7/3/2007 2:28 PM, Sandra Cahillane wrote:
> 
>> ...there is still a lot of blank space in a 1280x1024 resolution browser.
> 
> You should see it at 1920x1440.  :-)
> 

Since this is something the list churns through every so often, I
thought I'd throw out what little hard data I have about our users'
current display environments.  From a current snapshot of hits on our
main web site (basically, the last two days):

Number of different screen resolutions reported: 35 (including unusual
things like 992x695, 1088x612, etc., ranging all the way up to
2560x1024.  Can I have that monitor please?)

Most common screen widths:

  800 (almost all 800x600): 12% of the total hits
  1024 (almost all 1024x768): 56%
  1280 (mostly 1280x1024, but also non-negligible hits
    on 1280x800 and 1280x768): 21%

  [Larger than 1280: 5%]


While 56% of the *screens* are 1024px wide, only 41% of the *windows*
are between 975px and 1024px, so a substantial number of those users are
not running their browsers fullscreen.  Likewise, 21% of the screen are
1280px-wide, but only 14% of the windows are in that range.


[Triviata: All of this comes from log hits with a Javascript-set cookie
that reports screen and window dimensions.  Standard caveats apply about
Javascript-disabled browsers, impish hacking to report false values, the
likelihood that our users are just like your users, etc.  In the end,
the moral of the story is that the display environment is too diverse
for page designs to make assumptions about the dimensions they're
playing with.]


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu