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230 Comments
- SniperGX1, on 10/12/2007, -11/+198hell yeah it is, my calculator can do 800x600
- jasnmb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+66Under "page options" at the top-right there is a "switch to narrow layout" so your grandma can still use yahoo without horizontal scroll bars.
- ZenKai, on 10/12/2007, -8/+60I think I speak for all web designers when I say: PLEASE! PLEASE! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY YES!
- pondster, on 10/12/2007, -13/+57Actually this is a mute point. With PC users getting older and older, many of them need to keep a lower resolution inorder to read the screen. Being a developer, I want my page to be easily viewed by everyone. So no, I dont think we should abandon 800 x 600 just yet.
- densze, on 10/12/2007, -8/+51the problem is that our grandmas might not see that button
- ZenKai, on 10/12/2007, -4/+42mute != moot
- cphuntington97, on 10/12/2007, -3/+40I prefer sites that scale from low to high resolutions with ease. I want to be able to maximize my window and have the content fill the entire screen.
A narrow strip of content and tons of white space is rediculous. - Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28Screen resolution has little to do with it. Lots of people with high-res monitors don't maximise their browser windows, and lots of people at 1024x768 surf with a sidebar open. It's all about the available canvas width, and the trend for that is a lot less clear cut.
The same advice as always stands: you don't need to decide on a minimum canvas width to support, web pages are fluid by default and fit any non-pathological canvas width. Don't worry about 800x600, use a fluid width and be user-friendly for everybody at once. - EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26As Bogtha said--and it can't be stressed enough--not everybody maximises their browser window. In fact, most people DON'T. Even as resolution goes up to 1600x1200 the average browser is sized to only ~960x755. Just because monitors might support 1024x768 doesn't mean you have to try and monopolize every single pixel.
Ideally you should use liquid layouts to allow users to size their window however they'd like. Otherwise keep in mind if you force users to resize their browser window to see your page it's a bad first impression. I highly recommend the research done by Adrian Roselli which tells you how to track real browser resolution rather than desktop resolution, and provides lots of interesting statistics: http://roselli.org/adrian/articles/browser_stats_2.asp - shawnz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+29@ r00tus3r:
I hate to say it, but that's completely your fault. You can't use a resolution double the size of a PSP screen and expect there to be no scrolling on pages. - scispaz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28I *really* want to hit you with a stick.
- mhlester, on 10/12/2007, -6/+28@SniperGX1
So you're saying you want to ABANDON support for your calculator?!?! Oh the humanity! - MixedSpleens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22800x600 as a screen res is outdated. that being said, I think designing for it is still good, because people don't allways maximize their browsers, or they might have a bookmarks or other side panel running.
But the number one reason to In my book is balance. So many websites cram in everything so tightly that it drives me crazy, and 800x 600 design gives the user passive white space to give the site balance - fyngyrz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22First of all, ideally, you should design your page so that as the browser display page size changes, so does the page. If you've not done that, your page could be better. HTML is a markup language that is *specifically* designed to allow a page to re-flow to match the browser's current display area, font size, image magnification, etc. *if* you don't screw up. Pages that make use of this (which is to say, don't hard-limit sizes) are enormously better than pages that don't.
Secondly, screen size does not equate to browser size. Browsers can be (mine *always* are) smaller, and Browsers can be larger the the screen *without* scroll bars in any system that doesn't map monitor space directly to desktop space. Browsers can (and do) scale fonts, images, and entire pages. The very *instant* you assume that what you are seeing as you design is what the user will see, you've gone and made a complete fool out of yourself.
Thirdly, Yahoo can do whatever it wants, and it will no more set the standard than I would if I limited my pages to a particular size. Yahoo hasn't been seriously relevant to me since the day they abandoned the original free, tree-structured format listing of websites that used to be "all" they were. They became just another money-for-space index, and a lousy one at that. - manata, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19My comment from one of the other million submissions on this topic: http://digg.com/technology/Yahoo_Redesigns_Home_Page
" I didn't notice it at first, and I was concerned to see that they were using static width columns. Well, they are, but only after the javascript identifies your screen resolution and displays an appropriate format. Here is a screenshot of the 800x600 navigation. http://img281.imageshack.us/img281/5672/yahoo8x69lr.png "
Why they didn't just go with a true fluid template is whole different issue... - bluemech, on 10/12/2007, -29/+47I'm using 1600x1200 but I cannot stand anything under 1280x1024. Well, I can live with 1024x768, but it's a stretch. 800x600 and below are terrible resolutions and I've gone out of my way ni the past to make websites hard to view for those people. 800x600 is outdated, time to up the resolution kids.
- jdavid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17i would agree that PC 800x600 might be finaly dieing off, however as cell phone displays get bigger, 800x 600 will be quite large for them. in the high res cell phones 640x480 is still big.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15My laptop is 1440x900, and my desktop is 1680x1050. That doesn't mean I want to view web pages that are 1440 pixels wide, or 1680 pixels wide. I want the real estate so I can have multiple windows in view at the same time without one overlapping the other. iChat, my mail application, a word doc, etc, etc. Lazy designers mandate large horizontal widths. It has nothing to do with the user's screen resolution, and everything to do with laziness in design.
- SpyDerMann, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18Screw them!
Most windows I browse in are in around 800 x 650 to leave space for other apps. I *NEVER* browse in fullscreen. - kimzor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13No. People still use 800x600 and it is unfair to single people out because of their screen resolution.
- Torias, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14800x600 is the however currently one of the most reverse compatible resolutions, and even though modern computers are now standardized at at /least/ 1024x768, there are still a number of old monitors out there that people use. Maybe to save money on having to buy new monitors, maybe out of nostalgia, and maybe because there's no other choice.
I'm not saying the march of technology isn't right to move forward, and I do agree it is about time it does so, but we must still be aware of the effect it will have.. - TravisL, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16The new page doesn't support camino or safari...
- jay314, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Sure, my screen resolution is larger than 800x600 (currently 1280x768 on the laptop).. BUT MY BROWSER WINDOWS AREN'T. I cascade my windows in Opera, so each is about 800x500.
I know the 800x600 rule is sometimes hard to develop for, but I say keep it around unless higher res is absolutely necessary. - tony23, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12@etruscan
Not *quite* true. 800x600 and 1024x768 are both close to equal, running about 40% each typically. Then there's the 6% living in the stone age of 640x480 resolution... - itsallgeektome, on 10/12/2007, -7/+181024x768 is just blurry for some people without 20/20 vision (most of us old folks without glasses). Still, would be nice to reclaim some of that space.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Fluid layouts are the way to go.
- pacogozalez, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11fyngyrz got it right!
HTML is a markup language that is *specifically* designed to allow a page to re-flow to match the browser's current display area, font size, image magnification, etc. Pages that make use of this (which is to say, don't hard-limit sizes) are enormously better than pages that don't.
Sadly most so called "web designers" totally ignore this fact, and we get stuck with horrible looking hard-limited pages. Sometimes i cant read the intresting text without some massive horizontal scrolling. Horizontal scroll sucks, while vertical scroll is accepted (got a scrollwheel?).
An initially good concept of html is crippled because web-designers dont got the brains to understand it... - DoubtfulSalmon, on 10/12/2007, -11/+20A thief thinks everybody steals. A self-indulgent web developer with a 4587475489573 x 3478473824 flat panel LCD display thinks that everybody has a 4587475489573 x 3478473824 flat panel LCD display.
- Deuterium, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Hopefully they are not for English teachers.
- cathode, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Same here. And I despise any website that takes over my entire desktop.
- jav1231, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9If Skeymedia are "Web Development Experts" why are they on a default WordPress webpage? Hmmm...spambot much?
- etruscan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10It may be outdated, but if you look at any large website's server logs, you'll see that 800x600 is still the most used resolution today. This is likely not the case on Digg, or on a gaming website, where the user base is generally more saavy and can skew the results - but overall, 800x600 still wins from a web usability perspective.
- MikeSD34, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8You know camino uses the gecko rendering engine right? So while the interface isn't Firefox, it is still essentially the same as far as yahoo is concerned.
- ByteGuerilla, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7My father finds 1024x768 difficult to view the text on, so I have to increase the DPI for him so Windows' UI fonts show up bigger, as sometimes if I'm using the family computer, nothing I do can fit onto 800x600, and my mother thinks everything looks too big on it. He can't change the size on webpages because web developers consistently refuse to use the CSS relative font sizes to make scaling easy.
His computer in his room (Pentium 133MHz Windows 98, it's all he needs for his word processing etc.) runs at 640x480 if I recall correctly, although that's possibly 800x600 and I'm just not seeing the difference. It's a good job he doesn't use Yahoo! then. He wouldn't have a chance of reading anything on my computer at 1280x1024.
Whilst many people don't use 800x600, there are a sizeable portion of the population who find it useful. And I doubt they'll know what "use narrow mode" even entails. - Tyrekicker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6According to my google analytics, 18.44% of my visitors are still using 800x600, followed by a whopping 57.28% on 1024x768.
Granted, this particular site is not exactly populated by 'tech' types (although firefox usage is around 12%), but if I were to eliminate 800x600 resolutions, I would be affecting around 1000 people every day.
Although, I have had a few visitors this month using Windows 95! Yikes! - LavosPhoenix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6If you can't display what you want in a webpage, using a resolution of 800x600, maybe you should reconsider the design. Not everyone is "leet" like you, and not everyone likes to be close to their monitor just to see what is displayed on the screen. Believe it or not, some people like to actually SEE what is on their computer screens, and see it clearly.
- ZenKai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7@foolfromhell: I agree and disagree with you. I'd love to have sites customize themselves to my rez (1600 x 1200), but it's problematic from a programming standpoint. It's trickier than you might think to code, and even trickier to make it look decent at both really small and really large rez. Think about it, if you have a post that about as long as the one I'm writing now, it occupies, let's say 650x200 pixels. If I stretch this to 1600 pixels wide, I lose the height of the post. This can wreak havoc on the positioning of other elements, and require someone to read an entire paragraph in a single line.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I have a 15 inch monitor and 800x600 res is the most confortable resolution for me (except for when playing games).
Anyway, at the moment yahoo's new site is blocking opera (allthough i works fine if you fake the browserid).
So its time to dump the yahoo.com for me. - kimzor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You also have to be logged in to comment...so that won't be the issue ;)
- heinousjay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5OS X is not DPI independent. I'm not familiar with any windowing environments for Linux that are. I think you pulled that comment straight from your ass.
- ZenKai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Automate a way to turn on Javascript on users who have it disabled. If you've ever tried talking a 55 year-old man who possesses the technical skill of tofu through enabling JS over the phone, you'd hesitate. Same reason we don't use JS validation exclusively. I run a large site (750k members), and we optimize for 8x6. Thing is, when you use compartmentalized content, its tricky to format it dynamically. And I for one am not huge on having to code everything 3 times.
- matt0817, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5i use it because im a cheap ass... the monitor still works, why not use it?
- xotox, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10@cphuntington97
Like this one? - ISVDamocles, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The answer is not to just stretch the layout sideways, but to adjust it entirely. Web designers complain about not being able to control the layout of the page like they could with printed documents, but I say they're just being lazy.
Basically, design the website for a certain physical size on, say, a 19" monitor, then when they come in, have a pseudo-welcome page use javascript to detect the resolution of the user's computer, then auto-load the real page, telling it which resolution's CSS file to use, which automatically chooses the proper pixel height for the designs and pictures (either using SVG [in the future] or choosing pre-rendered PNGs).
In fact... I think I'll start working on something to automate that kind of thing. - Unr3a1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If anyone wants to try viewing a page in an 800x600 resizable window, enter this in your address bar:
javascript:resizeTo(800,600)
I dont think it is a very true way to test a webpage, but its better than getting out an old monitor. - lament, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@EtherGnat:
"I highly recommend the research done by Adrian Roselli which tells you how to track real browser resolution rather than desktop resolution, and provides lots of interesting statistics: http://roselli.org/adrian/articles/browser_stats_2.asp"
those stats are from 6 years ago.
rule of thumb: design for your audience, as everyone's audience is different. here's the top 5 resolutions for one of my sites since January 1 of 2005 until today:
1024x768 - 56.50%
1280x1024 - 13.12%
800x600 - 10.08%
1280x800 - 5.23%
1152x864 - 3.10% - clintonforbes, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9It's only blurry if you have a small and crap monitor. So many applications are next to unusable at 800x600 (ie. any IDE, graphics editor) I can't believe that anyone still puts up with it. A 19" LCD is dirt-cheap these days.
I create web-sites for a living. My clients want to cater for 800x600 screens. But they also want every single piece of information about their company all on the home-page. Something has got to give. - danatks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Why they made it butt ugly is a whole different issue...
- imtigger2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Look... you can't surf pr0n with 800x600, all you'll get is ***** and a belly button, at 1024x768, you're still missing the legs... at 1280x1024, sweet, you've got all but her shoes in the pic... and THAT'S why all the foot-freaks prefer 1600x1200.
Bottom line, if the porn industry moved to 1280x1024 years ago, then so should we all. After all, they're responsible for making the internet popular in the early days.
ahhhh... so I heard. ;) - moolcool, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5WHAT?!??! 640x480 will nevah die
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