Ask HN: Should we still optimize for 1024x768? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should we still optimize for 1024x768?

7 pointsfjabre23 comments

I've been looking at my analytics "screen resolutions" page recently and only 5% of my site visitors are at 1024x768. By far the most common screen resolutions are 1280x800 (25%), 1440x900 (15%), and 1680x1050 (10%).

With that in mind, should devs continue to optimize their sites for 1024x768?

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I'm going to take the unpopular route and say you should not optimize for 1024 by 768 screen resolution. You should not optimize for any resolution.

You should stop using bogus web statistics based on screen resolution, because a screen resolution of a given size does not imply a browser window of a given size.

Computer displays are getting bigger. That means my efficiency should increase as my ability to manage more things on the screen should increase. I should now be able to do things such as writing a paper with multiple pages from other sources visible at the side for things like citations, and cross-referencing multiple visible documents without having to resort to toggling between windows.

I'd suggest that since so many screens now have a horizontal resolution of 1280 pixels, if you are going to optimize your pages, you should make sure they're optimized for browser windows sized to 640 pixels wide. I'm completely serious.

As a side note, there are multiple reasons why books are printed at the sizes they are. One of the big ones is that with columns of text at the sizes afforded by typical book sizes, humans read with some of the best efficiency.

~70 ems seems to be the consensus for optimal column width. Consider that 70 ems is smaller than a terminal window. I feel bad when I see people at the library open their browsers and maximize them on the Windows machines with 1680 by 1050 displays there, because they got accustomed to maximizing their application windows through conditioning at a time when most displays were 1024 by 768 or smaller. If you're reading Wikipedia on a fullscreen window at 1680 pixels of horizontal resolution, you're only degrading your own reading efficiency, whether you've realized it or not.

to people really run their web browser in full-screen at high resolutions though? i would be more concerned with recording the actual window sizes, not screen resolutions.

Valid point. I would venture to say that the majority of power users do not, but look around at an office meeting or in a classroom setting. Most generic users don't resize their browser after it opens. And if they do resize it, it's to make it fill the full screen.

I have found that the "power users" are moving towards multiple monitors and fill a single screen with a browser.

I have multiple monitors but I really dislike having a web browser at full screen. I always run it windowed.

Yes that's what I do. I want to see as much as possible without having to scroll. And I set up one monitor in portrait mode for working with documents or pages that are tall and narrow.

But then you don't get sub-pixel anti-aliasing, and on the very monitor where you do most of your reading.

Why not?

The sub-pixels are physically oriented horizontally normally; if you flip your monitor, they become vertically oriented, and most OSs/font renderers aren't set up to do sub-pixel antialiasing in the vertical direction, so they just disable it. It might not be much of a win to do it, either, since it'd just be giving you more effective resolution along the height of letters, which isn't usually the direction most in need of it.

Nonetheless, I think that's a small price to pay for being able to fit a vertical PDF on a monitor nicely.

Windows 7 does sub-pixel antialiasing in either monitor orientation. Looks fine to me.

I've got 1920x1200 + 2*1600x1200 pixels. Maximizing even on one of my "small" monitors would be a waste. Also, wide layouts are hard to read.

I'm also always doing several things at once, so I'll tend to fill up one browser window with tabs related to one topic, then launch off on another tangent and fill more browser windows with more tabs. And that's just on one of my 9 virtual desktops. So having only one browser window visible makes it hard to keep track of what window has what information.

My usage pattern is not typical.

The options are not mutually exclusive. It is possible, though more difficult, to design pages that accommodate resolutions as low as 1024 x Y, but that also expand to fit higher resolutions. Any good browser should support "min-width" and "max-width" properties, and even if they don't there are still ways to define at least the min-width.

Perhaps I'm old school, but I have respect for websites which utilize my entire screen and still function well and look nice. It takes talent to pull it off. Amazon, for example, has always made me proud. Starting 10 years ago, and probably because of blogging, the trend of fixed width with centered pages kicked in, and thankfully stuck.

It's so much easier to deal with fixed width, but you do have a choice in the matter.

But.. other things must be taken into account besides just the screen resolution, even when assuming the typical desktop/laptop model of browsing. A lot of not-very-competent users I see have their screens littered with toolbars... Internet Explorer users have a greater propensity to see them, but a lot of installers are giving Firefox toolbars if one is not careful as well. Power users, on the other hand, are a lot more likely to not use the browser window at full resolution. Even when I am casually browsing, I usually keep bookmarks open or Pidgin/Skype conversation to the side of the screen... it's usually not maximized, even on the small screen on my netbook.

There was an interesting Ask HN poll and disucssion on this a couple weeks ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584863

Yeah it looks like the people who actually posted analytics data in that post are backing up the claim that 1024x768 is no longer the gold standard even though it is still perceived that way..

From W3: 76% have a higher resolution than 1024x768. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

W3schools is not "W3", FYI.

I wouldn't be disregarding 20% of my users in a hurry.

I design more than I do backend stuff these days, and I don't think I'd even want to be designing much wider than 950px. More space can quickly mean more info and thus a more confused message for visitors.

I'm going to say if anything, one should optimize for 768x1024.

1) The ipad / tablets. I want to imagine that most users want to use it them in portrait mode when browsing sites.

2) Not sure about others, but I like keeping my browser resized to take up around half the screen width. Newer revs of windows seem to make the process easier

iPad is 1024x768 if that is important to you.

Who fills their whole screen with a web browser? Browser windows should be about 700 pixels wide.

Depends on the website - assuming you're asking re: HobsonFiles - I would estimate that you're ok moving to the larger screen sizes due to the likely more technical audience you're building for.

In my own experience planning around 1024x768 in general can be beneficial because:

a) It allows you to better focus your content rather than having space to fill which often leads to overdesign.

b) Often users with higher resolutions are either (a) Older (b) Less sophisticated which depending on your service can be some of your best converting traffic.

c) Interesting note from Nielsen along these lines suggesting that for users < that resolution they will absolutely not scroll to right, so dont put any important content to the right http://www.useit.com/alertbox/horizontal-attention.html

For sites that have a lot of content, you can just do a fluid layout that looks good at any resolution. Keep in mind, it won't look good at higher resolutions if there is too much open space. I have a few sites that look great on everything from a phone to a television screen.

If you properly float elements, they will take up horizontal space when they can and go to the next line when they can't.

They should if they're not providing alternate css for mobile devices.

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