Comments on: Designing for Modern Monitors

By: michael coyle

michael coyle — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:06:56 +0000

bit behind the times on this post, i didn’t think designers have been workin with 800×600 for the last 2 years. 1024×768 and 1280×1024 are the most popular with the rest spreading out over larger widescreen resolutions, a good size is 950px wide so you can still see the edges but the most you’d want to go would be 990.

I use Google analytics on quite a few different sites with different target audiences and 800×600 is almost non-existent these days. And anyway, people with that resolution should be used to not seeing the whole website anyway

By: nathan

nathan — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:12:09 +0000

@Martyn P – that is indeed true. However the difference isn’t going to be huge. If we were talking about browser usage then I’d agree with you, but monitor resolutions aren’t as directly favourable towards different professions as other variables.

I know plenty of web designers on 17″ monitors, and I know several ‘grannies’ on 19″. The fact of the matter is that there is an obvious drop in smaller screen resolutions so let’s stop restricting both design and owners of bigger monitors for the sake of a minority.

And if you’re designing a website for older or disabled people, there’s lots to consider as well as monitor resolution – perhaps I’ll write an article on the subject soon.

By: Martyn P

Martyn P — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:45:24 +0000

You’ve got to remember that the visitors to W3schools are not an average audience. I bet you don’t find many grannies visiting that site. So if you’re designing a site for them, this data doesn’t really apply.

By: Greg

Greg — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:49:00 +0000

I think what we will see in the future when screens get larger and wider. there will be more designs that use left floating divs that move content to fill the entire screen with out being flex-ie

By: Gilbert

Gilbert — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:38:49 +0000

Good article. I agree with everything you are saying. One thing that annoys me though is websites that are fixed width but aren’t centered. They just sit on the left of your screen. It really makes a site look bad.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:02:09 +0000

yep absolutely, with all the web designer toolbars (web developer, google, roboform, bookmarks etc) that knocks a huge area of my viewing window… always worth bearing in mind

By: Darren T

Darren T — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:09:16 +0000

Always worth bearing in mind that ‘the fold’ will shift vertically, depending on the number of additional toolbars a user has loaded into their browser and is currently displaying – so that can be a variable with a pretty wide range as well.