Yahoo releases a beta preview of their new site, and excludes 800×600 viewing without horizontal scroll bars.
Ten years ago, we’re all concerned about sites that should fit well with a 640 x 480 pixel screen size. Five years ago, most sites didn’t bother to support it and optimized their designs for the minimum 800 x 600 pixel.
In this day and age of Web 2.0, cheaper computer parts/monitors and much better technology, is it time to abandon 800 x 600? I believe so.
The percentage of users running on 800×600 is small enough (less than 10% IMO) that we can trade their discomfort for more “above the fold” space and better user experience for the majority.
Someone once said (I think it was Leo Laporte on an episode of TWiT, but not sure) that we should not allow those who are technologically behind to prevent us from making use of technology’s the full potential to move forward. Just take a good look at the gaming industry — they have graphics cards far more expensive than an entire home PC.
[tags]monitors, screen resolution, screen size[/tags]
The worldwide percentage is actually closer to 20% still using 800×600.
(http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)
The mistake that people usually make when trying to decide which minimum-resolution to support is to simply look at their visitor stats and assume that the 800×600 portion is decreasing. That may be true, but there are 6.5 billion people in this world that have yet to go online (and are expected to do so quite soon), and I don’t think they will be hopping on with anything more than the minimum 800×600.
Nope. Not everyone uses browsers maximised. I, for one, prefer to have my browser floating just above my other windows (IM, folders, etc.), be it on my 1024×768 laptop screen or 1600×1200 desktop screen.
Nope, I won’t abandon over 16% of my visitors.
Besides, even if everyone use 1024 pixel-wide monitors, it would still be easier to read 700 pixel-wide text.
I noticed that they were doing some testing of this a few months ago…
http://www.jonpayne.net/?p=114