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800 by 600

Friday August 26, 2005

It seems inevitable with alistapart.com ditching support for 800 x 600 that questions are going to be asked; can we stop designing for 800 x 600? I have to say I don't get it; going purely on statistics I could, just as easily, ask myself whether I should bother designing for Safari and it's quirky behaviour and what of Opera, I mean really, who gives a fuck about Opera? Who actually uses Opera? Don't answer that, no really don't.

With the standards community being so vocal about platform independence, accessibility for all, so on and so forth doesn't 800 x 600 simply mean another platform for which we should provide some amount of access? I guess the question is not, should we even bother with 800 x 600 any more but to what level are we going to allow this "platform" access?

Personally, I will continue to allow the 800 x 600 "platform" full access to my sites because up until a month ago I had a a screen that could only cope with a maximum of 1024 x 768 and with my browser side bar open, sites that allow access for 800 x 600 worked nicely, anything above? Not usable. In addition the latest iBooks to come from Apple still only go up to 1024 x 768 and with OS X there isn't really full screen view as with Windows, so it seems to me that 800 x 600 matters for that minority too and standards is in some ways all about accommodating the minority, is it not?

  1. Aloyzas

    1099 days ago

    http://stopdesign.com/log/2005/06/24/zoom-layout.html?style=zoom

  2. Chris

    1099 days ago

    Peronally, I just don't have anything to fill up all those other pixels.

  3. paul

    1099 days ago

    I hate too say it, but I think we DO need to still support 800?600. Last numbers I saw said about 1 in 4 people are still running their monitor at that resolution. That is still fairly significant. That being saidÖ if you have a highly specialized target audience, then maybe you can drop support for it.

    Another thing that surprised me was a stat I heard the other day that said only about 20% of American housholds have broadband. That seemed really low.

    If those numbers are correct, than the same people dropping support for 800?600, should also limit their media to dial-up size files. 1 in 4 are running 800?600, but only 1 in 5 have broadbandÖ at least at home.

  4. jordan

    1098 days ago

    My site is somewhat liquid, and I designed it to have a minimum width of about 500 pixelsónot because Iím interested in supporting 8xx (I could care less), but because it was easy to do, and I figured it would keep people from jumping all over me. For my part, I stay with 12xx, and all but about 40px of the window height is the page itself (window title, tabs, and 16px addressbar).

  5. Justin Perkins

    1098 days ago

    Since most Windows machines come out of the box set at 800?600 and lots of 12" laptops have trouble displaying bigger screen resolutions, I donít think we are anywhere near dropping support for such a ubiquitous screen size.

    I don't like how I tab from the website field to the top of your page instead of the message textbox, thatís wacky.

  6. jordan

    1098 days ago

    re: paul

    I could swear that I've heard broadband was at 50% in the US, and that I heard that statistic a year or so ago.

    Regardless, it's still good to optimise things as much as possible, without losing any quality. Doing anything else is a disservice to your users and your bandwidth.

  7. Prabhath Sirisena

    1098 days ago

    Personally, I will continue to allow the 800?600 "platform" full access to my sites because up until a month ago I had a a screen that could only cope with a maximum of 1024?768

    I still have that, so yes, all my sites will continue to support the uncool resolution, or be liquid. It's not fair to screw things up for myself.

  8. Simon Mason

    1098 days ago

    What about 1600?1200 support? I know it works, but gfx icons are too small to read, far too much whitespace, none of that lovely side scrolling.. shesh!

    Just like the overly tall person, I'm a minority too!

  9. Jens Meiert

    1098 days ago

    Good, that there is discussion about this, bad, that there is so much discussion on so many sites. Just gave my two cents at hicksdesign, again

  10. Andy Hume

    1098 days ago

    _"...make pages which are adaptable. Make pages which are accessible, regardless of the browser, platform or screen that your reader chooses or must use to access your pages. This means pages which are legible regardless of screen resolution or size,"_

    That comes from one of the most famous ALA articles. It was a seminal work in designers understanding and embracing of web design.

    It still makes perfect sense to me:

    http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dao

  11. Pierce

    1098 days ago

    I've tried upping site resolutions into the 1024 region. As chris said, its a matter of content. Seriously, I've trouble getting most of my sites above the 600px wide mark. Unless I want it to be just one long line of text.
    Happy with 800px space for the moment, but flexible. I do love ALAs layout.

  12. martin

    1098 days ago

    Hello John,

    I don’t understand the imperative to drop support for 800×600 (when I hear it expressed). Why should we have to? It seems that we’re at a moment in time when we should actually be trying to support as many screen sizes (and their platforms) as possible.

    Having said that, in my own mind, 800×600 has a special status, kind of as a baseline display. It more or less occupies the middle position on a continuum between ginormous displays (1600×1200 plus) and the smaller displays of mobile devices (is a width of 240px about average?) that seem to be proliferating all around (although I’ve yet to hop aboard that particular wagon myself). I was stuck for many years with an 800×600 monitor and, despite the wishful thinking of many web designers, it’s still widely in use in certain sectors, at least in Europe (think of small business and charitable organisations, public libraries and schools, especially in more provincial/less wealthy areas).

    At least in this respect, I don’t set much store by ‘target audience’ considerations. Even if statistics about “our target audience’s screen resolution” are accurate, there’s no guarantee about the size of the browser window used for surfing. Moreover, I think that target-audience considerations shouldn’t impact upon the usability and accessibility of sites, if it can be helped (all things considered). And in this case, it surely can. Going fluid, for example, just requires more work from web designers – it requires more webcraft and often more imagination.

  13. Matt Robin

    1098 days ago

    I have to scroll UPWARDS to read other people’s comments to this post!
    What are you Welsh...or Irish?!! #frowns #

    800?ó600 support...until recently, I wouldn’ve gushed about still supporting this tiny size (I know some older people with old laptops that have screens that can only do this size!)

    But then I thought about it a bit more and now I think ‚Äòfuck it’ life’s too damn short to bother with people who can’t be bothered to upgrade!

  14. Joshua

    1097 days ago

    ALA dropping support for 800?ó600 is pretty different than a site used by the ‚Äòaverage’ web user going to a fixed, 1000-width layout. Its nothing more than an assumption on my part, but I’m assuming the people who fall into the target market of ALA and have monitors set to a 800?ó600 are far and few between.

    And besides, having to scroll right doesn’t exactly make the content over there inaccessible.

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