[Sigia-l] 800 or 1024 - Which min. display resolution to build for?

[Todd Warfel]

David,

In short, over the past five years, we've observed a trend in  
increasing screen sizes (e.g. 17"-20"+), an increase in base  
resolution size (e.g. 1024, 1280, 1440), but not a proportional  
overall increase to browser window size increase.

What we have seen is that more and more people have started using  
document and applications side-by-side instead of at full screen. Mac  
users have pretty much always been like this. It's the Windows users  
that we've noticed the most significant change in over the years.  
We're not 100% sure why, but we do know a few things that have  
contributed to this:
* Windows no longer launches application windows at full-screen by  
default like it used to
* With the larger screens, users have found that they can "afford" to  
use the extra space to do more efficient multi-tasking by have  
multiple windows side-by-side

We've been observing in the following:
* About 500 participants that we've observed over the past 5 years
* Multiple environments (e.g. Higher Education, Financial, Energy,  
eCommerce/Transactional, Telecom)
* Homes of HS-Graduate level educations w/an income of $18-$250k+
* Men and women ages 21-68+

So, we haven't observed grade school kids.

This syncs up with the observations that have been made by a very  
large eTailer who has been tracking browser window sizes over the  
past 3-5 years. I won't name the eTailer, as I don't have the  
permission, but I have spoken to one of the people on their design  
team who contacted me to discuss this.

So, nothing officially published, but this is what we've observed.

On Apr 29, 2006, at 7:57 PM, Skot Nelson wrote:

> check this list archives. Todd Warfel offered some input related to  
> this topic in the recent discussion of "fluid designs"
>
> On Apr-29-2006, at 2:21 PM, Jaeger, David wrote:
>
>> The stats at http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp  
>> <http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>  indicate  
>> almost 75% of Internet users have a 1024 x 768 or higher display  
>> resolution. What the stats don't reveal is the percentage of these  
>> users that have their browsers set to "maximize" so they don't  
>> have to scroll vertically to see all the content on a site or app  
>> built for a minimum 1024 width.


Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
Messagefirst | designing and usability consulting
--------------------------------------
Contact Info
Voice:    (607) 339-9640
Email:    todd at messagefirst.com
AIM:       twarfel at mac.com
Blog:      http://toddwarfel.com
--------------------------------------
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they are not.