Good statistics site

[superbird]

I'd like to know stats for monitor resolutions - I'm particularly interested in European statistics

[superbird]

My boss wants me to build a site for 1024 res - should I convince him it's a bad idea

[jaiem]

In my experience about 70-75% of people are using 1024 resolution with 800x600 the second most popular.

IMO if you're making a general public site I'd build it for resolutions of 800x600 or higher.

[superbird]

Is that for customers you've dealt with or the web as a whole?

[George]

Does 800x600 go better with a 15" monitor and 1024x768 go better with a 17"? Are font sizes roughly similar on these two setups? Just looking for opinions.
George

[TWTCommish]

Originally posted by jaiem
In my experience about 70-75% of people are using 1024 resolution with 800x600 the second most popular.

IMO if you're making a general public site I'd build it for resolutions of 800x600 or higher.

You sure? I heard CNET measured it the other way around - 70% using 800x600, since a lot of computers come with it that way.

Anyway, it has to look good on 800x600 IMO - you can afford to ignore 640x480 though.

[mingham]

You should always make a site for all resolutions. If you don't want to make your tables 100%, you should make seperate pages for each resolution.

[Aidan Bahta]

Originally posted by superbird
My boss wants me to build a site for 1024 res - should I convince him it's a bad idea

If you know who will be looking at the site (for instance, a small group of people), then 1024x768 should be ok, provided the visitors are at the res.

If the boss hears you out, that's great. If the boss insists, the boss insists. It's the boss's site, let him worry about incompatibility.

Originally posted by George
Does 800x600 go better with a 15" monitor and 1024x768 go better with a 17"? Are font sizes roughly similar on these two setups? Just looking for opinions.
George

That's what a lot of people use, but a lot of people are weird. An old friend of mine has a huge monitor (19 or 21 inch) an insists on using 640x480. I use a 19" monitor and insist on 1600x1280. I used to use 1280x1024 on a 13" monitor. Some people (like myself) are weird.

The font size is roughly similar in size (in inches/cm) with those two setups, though.

Originally posted by TWTCommish

Originally posted by jaiem
In my experience about 70-75% of people are using 1024 resolution with 800x600 the second most popular.

IMO if you're making a general public site I'd build it for resolutions of 800x600 or higher.

You sure? I heard CNET measured it the other way around - 70% using 800x600, since a lot of computers come with it that way.

Anyway, it has to look good on 800x600 IMO - you can afford to ignore 640x480 though.

I have heard the same. However, sites built for developers (such as SitePoint) would have more people at higher resolutions, because developers tend to be like that.

640x480 is fading away, but I think the site should look OK in it. You never know when a potential client using 640x480 would look at a site that just doesn't look good at that res. If it is functional, that's good enough.

Originally posted by mingham
You should always make a site for all resolutions. If you don't want to make your tables 100%, you should make seperate pages for each resolution.

Personally, I hate sites that use 100%. If you've opened one up at a res higher than 1280x1024 then you'll know what I mean.

Setting the width to 600 or 760 is much more effective. It lets you know what your site will look on all resolutions, and is much more predictable. Plus, it loads faster than a % based sites.

Some things (like forums) look good with 100%. Most don't.

Also, I don't think making pages for seperate resolutions is a good idea either. It would take a lot of work to do, unless of course the content is pulled from a database.

[mingham]

Yeah, but do you want your page to look cool, or have a larger audience. That's just a judgement call.

[dominique]

superbird, this might provide some insight: http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com/

It doesn't distinguish between geographical locations, but it should provide at least some help.

According to the site (http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com/monitorres.html):

800 x 600 - 54.7%
1024 x 768 - 26.2%
640 x 480 - 7.5%