What size website?
August 8th, 2006 • Posted by Bill Bice • Permalink
I'm thinking in terms of pixels: what is the best screen resolution for which to optimize your website? The answer is simple, because the most common size (roughly 60% of your website visitors) is 1024×768 pixels.
But, you can't forget the 17% of your visitors still running 800×600, so your site still needs to work well at this smaller resolution. And the future is bigger and bigger screens. The remaining balance of your visitors are already there with resolutions of 1280×1024 or larger. So, you also want a site design that looks good at large resolutions, too.
Jakob Nielsen gives us the three criteria for evaluating page layout at these various sizes:
- Initial visibility: Is all key information visible above the fold so users can see it without scrolling? This is a tradeoff between how many items are shown vs. how much detail is displayed for each item.
- Readability: How easy is it to read the text in various columns, given their allocated width?
- Aesthetics: How good does your page look when the elements are at the proper size and location for this screen size? Do all the elements line up correctly — that is, are captions immediately next to the photos, etc.?
So, it's not so simple anymore. Your site needs to work well at 800×600, 1024×768 and 1280×1024, and don't forget checking at least the two most common browsers at all those resolutions, IE and Firefox. This is exactly the approach we take with our spa websites.
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