Retire the 800 Table Rule

[MrYum]

Originally Posted by Thomas

This is stats from thecounter.com for aug 2006:

1024x768 61300035 (55%)
1280x1024 21103528 (19%)
800x600 18625349 (16%)
Unknown 4539013 (4%)
1152x864 3836621 (3%)
1600x1200 890852 (0%)
640x480 336980 (0%)

/Thomas

Perhaps it's the dinosaur in me, but based on the above numbers...I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel on 800 wide yet. The time will come for sure, but 16% remains at 800.

Look at it this way...by building for 800 wide, you're serving up a quality experience for 93%+ of your target market. Conversely, by not building for 800...you're effectively alienating 16% of that audience, by forcing them to side scroll (possibly missing your ads if they're on the right of the screen).

In a brick and mortar business, would you have someone stand outside the door and direct 1.6 of every 10 customers to a tacky warehouse based solely on the fact that they arrived to your store in an older model car?

In reality, if you build correctly...your sites will look good at all resolutions. Yes, you do give up some real estate...but you don't force any appreciable percentage of your customers into a lesser surfing experience either.

This reasoning was why I lauched the re-design of FPP to fit at 800 wide...and it looks good all the way up to my screen size at 1280. Yep, some white space on both sides at wider res...but so what...