Designing for 800×600, Is it still necessary?
The number of users of 800×600 monitors is decreasing, So how important is it to stick to the 800Px limit? Here are some things to consider.
1. The actual percentage of 800×600 users on your site.
The general percentage of 800×600 users online seems to be somewhere between 18%-20% (according to W3Schools and browsersize.com) That number is decreasing fast, but if that’s the percentage of 800×600 using visitors on you site, you still need to fully support 800×600 by sticking to the 800Px limit. But not every site gets those numbers, if your site if a tech related site, the numbers will much lower. For example, this blog gets about 2.5% 800×600 users, I would also say that it’s safe to assume that a graphic designers forum will get 0%.
So the first thing you need to check it what the percentage of 800×600 for your site is. Based on that, you can decide how much 800×600 support your site will offer.
2. Will a wider site do any good.
Actually, sometimes it will just make things worse. If you’re just going to add a few pixels of width to each column, you’re probably doing more damage than good. This is because reading too long lines becomes very uncomfortable. The recommended length of a line should be from about 68 to 82 characters, which is about 450-550px, Anything longer becomes hard to read. So if you decide to make your site any wider, make sure no single column is wider than about 550px.
3. Keep the 800×600 users in mind.
Well, at least a bit. whatever content you put beyond the 800px limit, make sure it’s not too important, or that the smaller screen users know where to find it.
4. Liquid designs
Liquid designs would be ideal if the range it stretches to can be set. You don’t want a 2400×1800 user to have to make his browser window smaller just to read your text normally. the CSS min-width and max-width properties can control that, with one ‘minor’ problem: they’re not supported by IE…
Download Design
