What Resolution Do I Design For?
Interface Design Web Design | Monday, August 6, 2007This is a common question asked by web designers in forums and emails. The most common resolution is changing, and unfortunately there are few reliable ways to get statistics on browser display resolutions. One of the few reliable sources is the W3Schools website. Here are some statistics gathered from the logs of W3Schools. (note: the statistics may not be entirely accurate; because W3Schools is visited mainly by people with a web development interest, there probably is some bias toward higher resolutions.
W3Schools has yet to release their July 2007 stats, so the following chart is based on the January 2007 statistics (which may be slightly out of date). The subsequent chart is based on five years of statistics gathered by W3Schools.
Current Resolution Trends
W3Schools detected no resolutions of 640×480 on the site, and the last time they did was in 2004. Now for a chart which shows long term screen resolution trends:
Resolution Trends Over 5 Years
Analysis
These statistics show that the most popular resolution at the current time is 1024×728, although a quite a large percentage of people use higher resolutions. If you’re designing websites, you probably shouldn’t worry about anyone using 640×480, as it is pretty much obsolete, but you should not risk isolating the many 800×600 folk, so at least make sure that they can read the main content section on your blog/site without scrolling back and forth. Chances are they’ll stay at your site longer if you don’t make them seasick.
2 Responses to “What Resolution Do I Design For?”
By Nyssa on Aug 7, 2007 | Reply#
With my recent redesign, I decided that I would skip 800×600 and design for 1024×768 and higher. While there are plenty of people still using 800×600, I think it’s safe for a good amount of websites to move away from designing for it.
I guess the best way for people to figure out whether they shouldn’t worry about 800×600 anymore or not is to check out statistics for their own website.
By Dan on Aug 8, 2007 | Reply#
I absolutely agree. And although I did plenty of research and determined the W3Schools website was probably most reliable, I would like to see a similar study done with a larger sample size, and of different demographics. (web designers, sports forum viewers, viewers of ebay, facebook etc)