Currently acceptable minimum screen resolution to develop for?

McGintyMcGoo

Greetings

What is the currently acceptable minimum screen resolution to develop a website for taking into account a "fixed width centred design" (i.e. the design is not allowed to "flow"; instead it will be fixed at 1024px wide and will appear centred at higher resolutions).

Would it be 1024x768?

McGintyMcGoo

Huggles

McGintyMcGoo wrote:

Greetings

What is the currently acceptable minimum screen resolution to develop a website for taking into account a "fixed width centred design" (i.e. the design is not allowed to "flow"; instead it will be fixed at 1024px wide and will appear centred at higher resolutions).

Would it be 1024x768?

McGintyMcGoo

I think tyhe width is a little excessive. I find 950px is a good fixed width. The height is a little short and tbh I wouldnt be worried about heights.

Hal1

You need to make a style sheet to be compatible with various screen sizes. Or it will look s*it tbh.

McGintyMcGoo

The Gooner - So the fact that you design for 950px wide means that users with screens resolutions of 800x600 will need to use a scroll bar. So I assume that you find that acceptable? (I do anyway). Don't mind the height resolution as obviously pages will be longer.

Hal1 - Unfortnately, the site was already designed by someone else and is quite wide (and the design does not allow for any "flowing").

seamus

1024 is little wide.

Develop the website so it looks good on a screen with a resolution of 1024x768. You can't be sure what way people have their screens configured, and what size the usable browser area is, but you can't really go wrong with an 800x600 size.

800x600 retains the width:height ratio of most screens (more pleasing to the eye), but leaves room for taskbars & toolbars.

As Hal1 points out, the screen size of the visitor can make a huge difference to how they perceive your site. If the content area is too small, it makes it bland and boring on massive resolutions. If the content area is very big or complex, people on smaller resolutions or handhelds will get pissed off.

Making a stylesheet that adjusts the size to any resolution is tricky. My approach would be to develop the initial CSS for a set size, then tweak it later for scaling.

ron_darrell

I'd go with Ha1 here, if you really want it to look as well as possible on some of the really high powered screens then you probably need a separate style sheet for each resolution and a script to detect and implement for the appropriate res. Personally I still code for 800x600 (centered) which is fine for 95% of my customers (the other 5% is made up of resolutions of 640x480 and 1280x1024+). But a specific stylesheet for each res would solve this 5% for me, I just can't be a***ed doing it

-RD

McGintyMcGoo

Thanks for all of the advice and opinions. I'll probably just develop it so that it looks good on a 1024px screen width and take it from there.

Cheers

McGintyMcGoo

axer

ron_darrell wrote:

I'd go with Ha1 here, if you really want it to look as well as possible on some of the really high powered screens then you probably need a separate style sheet for each resolution and a script to detect and implement for the appropriate res. Personally I still code for 800x600 (centered) which is fine for 95% of my customers (the other 5% is made up of resolutions of 640x480 and 1280x1024+). But a specific stylesheet for each res would solve this 5% for me, I just can't be a***ed doing it

-RD

I also develop for screen size of 800x600 the majority of the time. A 800x600 website does not look back on a 1024x768 or 1280x1024 screen.

DemonOfTheFall

Bit small on a 1680x1050 or a 1920x1200 one though

squibs

My stats show quite a few visitors still coming in to my sites on 800*600. Perhaps they are the same people using 8-bit video (really!). If it's not possible to have a scalable 100% width design, consider 800*600 or you may be alienating visitors. I know I wouldn't spend time on a site if I needed to scroll left/right.