While being confronted with a question a couple of days ago, if the 800×600 resolution is still matter for the web design, my first reaction was to say that even if it matters, then not much, but after remembering seeing some statistics from some portuguese sites, i have remembered. So i have checked just statistics for 5 different sites with a different audiences, to see if the 800×600 resolution still matters. The results were a kind of surprising for me.
But first of all, a good site should have a liquid design, this way it should display in 800×600, more or less in the same way as in other higher resolutions. I am still trying to convince the designer with whom i am working on websites to start moving into making flexible designs, and the next project i am finishing at the moment is quite a step from the previous experiences. =O)
But back to the resolution statistics – in a specific theme site (geology), having more than 90% of the visitors portuguese – the percentage of users having a screen resolution of 800×600 was 10.59%, in a general shopping site the percentage was 8.54%, a site connected with the children had 8.47%, some web design site – 1.82%, this site on the contrary to the others i have compared has only 2.85%, but the most users visiting my site are not from the Portugal =O)
And if you still think that such numbers as 8% or 10% are not really important, then the fact of not ignoring the Macintosh users, which is more or less accepted across web community, seems to be ridiculous, because for the general statistics Os X users do not represent more then 1% in Portugal.
After seeing that numbers i decided to check on the statistics from other sources, so this what i have found about the users using 800×600 resolutions:
- W3Schools – 14%
- Digital Web – 28% (January 2006)
- tamingthebeast – 10.88%
- Upsdell – 12%
- Jakob Nielsen – 17%
- Game Producer – 2.57%
In short – in Portugal it is still matters, to test sites for this resolution. As for the web in general – i believe that the answer is pretty much the same, there are many users, who are still bound to the 800×600 resolution, and we have no right of ignoring them, or at least we should try to pay attention. =O)
=O)
I would even add, then when in General the 800×600 resolution statistics will drop below the percentage of the Macintosh users, then it will be the time to consider of ignoring it.
=O)
On a more serious note, the phone, palm and smart devices with browsers are becoming more and more common, thats why we should pay more and more attention to them, and they are so far from that “miserable” 800×600 resolution, so i think there is no way we will ignore this resolution in the next couple of years.