What about the 800 x 600 folk?

[bwelford]

I thought I better raise this in the Padded Room in case the shouting gets too loud.

Today there were one or two wide images that "broke" the width of my 1024 x 768 resolution screen. In other words, I got a horizontal scroll bar. Since I am always counselling others to make sure they welcome those 40% or so of visitors who prefer to use a 800 x 600 resolution window, I wondered how well this forum would fit in for most regular pages.

Horror of horrors I found on testing in a 800 x 600 window most pages show a horizontal scroll bar, admittedly for a very small slice of the screen. Perhaps as with Jakob Nielsen's website the content is more important than the cosmetics. However I thought it was worth a mention.

[Marcia]

I won't shout, I had 800x600 until about a month ago and one of my pet peeves is side scrolling. I was constantly annoyed by sites that made me scroll.

IMHO it's a really BAD idea for ecom sites with columns especially, since the most clickable and valuable screen real estate is over on that right hand side column that's so handy for easy mouse clicks, and that's what gets obscured.

What's interesting is that little colorful section with the smilies automatically attracts the eye more often than any other spot on these page when in the edit screen here. There really can be a case made for right hand navigation in ecom sites, done to be compatible with 800x600 resolution.

[Webmaster T]

Agreed, I get a little scroll but the posts being pushed below the left menu is maybe a little more annoying. First few times I didn't figure that out til I got a notice for a subscribed thread and knowing there were posts scrolled down.

[Chris_D]

Some statistics always help.

According to Onestat 22.06.2004

http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox31.html

The most popular screen resolutions on the web in the world are:

1. 1024 x 768 54.02%
2. 800 x 600 24.66%
3. 1280 x 1024 14.1%
4. 1152 x 864 4%
5. 640 x 480 0.6%
6. 1600 x 1200 0.8%
7. 1152 x 870 0.1%

1280 x 1024 is the 17in and 19 inch LCD monitor 'standard' resolution - and with 19in LCDs now below $US700 - I expect that the uptake of this resolution - and higher resolutions - will increase dramatically.

800 x 600 is down to one quarter of users. Mind you - the stats indicate that there aren't many notebook internet users (which typically run at 1600 x 1200 wide these days)

I wouldn't ignore 25% of users - but I'd also make sure that I didn't upset the high resolution 'early adopters' either!

[bwelford]

Of course some may choose to view their browser through a smaller resolution window on their higher resolution screen. They can then run other applications, e.g. Notepad, elsewhere on the screen.

[Lex]

The 800 x 600 scroll issue is on the Glitch List. Hoping this will be resolved soon....