I'm working on a mockup of my web site right now.... I've got a title/logo that I like now despite the fact that I have no artistic skills. What desktop resolution should I target for people looking at my web site? It looks nice on my system, but I'm at 1280x1024... It's way too huge at 640x480 of course.

I'm curious what the most common resolution is, and what other people target for optimal web site aesthetics?

I think 800x600 is a good size to design for. Even if they run at a higher resolution, not everyone surfs in a maximized browser window.

I found these stats on the web... out of date but it sounds like 800x600 is a good rez to shoot for. I found some other stats before I redid my page and came to that same conclusion.

800x600 is the most common resolution in use (October, 2001), approximately 50-55%.
1024x768 is the second most common monitor resolution in use, approximately 40-45%.

I'd say try to aim for 800x600. Remember that wide columns of text are often very hard to read. I think I hear somewhere that 13 centimeters (~5") was optimal.

I'd say design the site indepedent of resolution by using % values (eg., cell size on tables).

Limit the size of graphics to less than 512x400 which will display correctly on all monitors.

Test on different browsers with different screen resolutions.

From TheCounter.com:

Resolution Stats

Sat Feb 1 00:01:02 2003 - Wed Feb 26 18:55:02 2003 25.8 Days

800x600 49786698 (47%)
1024x768 42951891 (40%)
1280x1024 5053401 (4%)
1152x864 3395451 (3%)
640x480 2633787 (2%)
Unknown 1240242 (1%)
1600x1200 801555 (0%)

The numbers are based upon the total number of visitors (about 113,973,510) to their network of sites during the past survey period.

David

Excellent info, thanks!

Yes, great info, thanks DGuy!

I wouldn't have thought that so many people still use 800x600.

Also great to see that so few use 640x480.

Makes me feel better about doing an 800x600 game now :)

Originally posted by RedClaw
Also great to see that so few use 640x480.

Makes me feel better about doing an 800x600 game now :)

Yeah a couple of my new titles are 800x600 - there is one drawback though. The pictures are all bigger, so the download size is proportionately larger.


- S