Joshuaink: Looking for an 800 x 600 Reboot superstar

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Looking for an 800 x 600 Reboot superstar

Monday May 1, 2006

I think it’s a real shame that 800×600 seems to be dead and buried, especially as a lot of my leisure time on the web is spent via my iBook.

The iBook, as seen on the Apple site today, on this May Reboot day of 2006, offers a maximum resolution of 1024×768 and it being a Mac, and it having those sexy hot corners for Exposé functions, I rarely have my browser at the full width and height of the available screen space. 800×600 works nicely as a standard, therefore, and I appreciate those sites that support it.

My browsers are bang up to date, there is nothing old fashioned about an iBook running OS X Tiger and here’s betting that people are still buying them, so here’s betting there’s another 5 years or more left in the old beasts yet.

What inspired this post was the few reboots that I saw (before the site seemed to die under the strain) that made no attempt to support 800×600.

Rather than get angry, though, I am going to open up the comments and ask you to point out those Rebooters who still think 800×600 matters and vote for your favourite. In a week or three I’ll do the adding up and let’s see whether we can announce an 800×600 Reboot superstar right here.

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Jen

1412 days ago

I still design for 800×600 at work and will probably do so until 800×600 no longer exists. I think designers too often marginalize people who they think are in the past. Being a standards/accessibility nut, I want everyone to enjoy their experience on a web site I’ve built.
Jon Hicks

1412 days ago

I agree – its an issue independent of monitors. You could be using a 30” cinema display , but have the window small. Thats user choice, and should be accounted for
lm

1412 days ago

i havent found anything to suggest yet but from what i saw i only can assume that many designers, keeping themselves busy with working on Macs, dont bother at all about how their websites look in IE (PC). No order in layout, left (or right column) is down under . Never mind, they are all in a year 3000 apparently.
Jen

1412 days ago

@lm In my case, I’d have to disagree with that statement. I work on a Mac but check in all major browsers, mac and pc. If I’m not bugging my co-workers who are on PC’s then I use our account at BrowserCam.

Besides, I don’t think the layout being bad has anything to do with Mac or PC, it has to do with writing bad code.
Andy Hume

1412 days ago

Yes! Don’t design for 1024×768, 800×600, or any other specific res. Design for the web. How many times do otherwise great designers need reminding of that?

Just because ALA did it, doesn’t mean it’s right. Infact I think it’s nearly always wrong.
Jonathan Snook

1412 days ago

I know my design technically doesn’t count but I included a collapse widget so that the design could live at 800w.
James John Malcolm (AkaXakA)

1412 days ago

Mine very, very, nearly fits into 8×6…I started out at 770px max, but quickly found ItJustNeeded™ 800px all for itself.

The whitespace made me do it!
Prabhath Sirisena

1412 days ago

Mine is liquid between 600px and 1100px – haven’t yet done any design that ignored the venerable 800.
Justin Perkins

1412 days ago

And I thought fixed width layouts where gone, no, they just bumped it up a notch. Silly rabbits.

I think Adam could do without the linking, especially twice ;)
Faruk Ate?ü

1412 days ago

Couldn’t agree more. I saw that Roger Johansson generally keeps his browser window around 800~ pixels wide, despite having a much larger screen.

Me, I rather like wide browser windows, but maximized windows are so Windows, it’s really inefficient. My browser windows (I currently have three open) vary from 1500 to 850~900 pixels, so I too feel that this should be accomodated more properly.
Denis Radenkovic

1412 days ago

Not sure if it has anything to do with the Reboot, but I noticed that the new Adobe site has adopted the Macromedia look, and it’s for 800.
Michele

1412 days ago

Mine should be fine with 800*600. :)
Jesse

1412 days ago

With dual 20 inch displays I like to run two browser windows side by side on one monitor… I really love the flexible width pages as they can adjust to my viewing mood and show that the person who created that site put a lot of thought into their page beyond what they can do in Photoshop. Practical design is something that escapes many new designers I think ;)
Ted Drake

1412 days ago

We launched Yahoo! Tech today and it’s got a sliding personalized column to give users at 800X600 and larger full access to the information.

It took much longer to work on and we were actually re-adjusting the templates just hours before launch to fix a bug with it in IE6. But… if you are looking for a method to provide for everyone, give it a try.

http://tech.yahoo.com
garrett

1412 days ago

Yay, my rebooted blog supports 800×600! Maybe it’s a little too minimal to win though :(
Kitsimons

1412 days ago

I try to keep my fixed-width designs under 800 pixels wide, but that’s more to keep things looking sweet on 1024×768. At 800×600 things will look crammed up once scrollbars and browser borders are taken into account, unless the window is maximised.

Having said that, I really don’t see the need for fixed-width designs to go over 800 pixels wide in most instances. Fluid would be the better option if it did.
Brian

1412 days ago

I didn’t personally get to finish my site in time. Probally will be a week late…bleh. But I must say…I’m not impressed that much with the rebooters this time. Too many similar designs and layouts. The same people still shine though. Justkyle, Hicksdesign, If..Else…but overall the majority are just disappointing.
Brian

1412 days ago

Chris. Your site is beautifully done. I like its simple yet effective design. I’d say it shines up there with the best of them
Chris Williams

1412 days ago

This seems to be a topic that has arisen its ugly head again recently what with a number of designer sites seemingly abandoning 800×600. There was a brief topic about this over at fadtastic last week (http://fadtastic.net/2006/04/21/how-big-is-too-big/) which I was completely astounded at. For the writer to think no-one uses this resolution anymore was pretty shocking to me.

The stats I have access to still show a large percentage using 800×600 and is definitely something we should still be designing to as default.

Like other designers on here have mentioned already – my site is also fluid/liquid so should work from 750px wide upwards.
Anders G

1412 days ago

I’d put a cent on my own reboot. Last time I checked, it “barely” worked with 800×600.
Juani

1412 days ago

Phu’s awesome site rearrange the columns according the resolution and yes, it works at 800×600.

That site is really nice, it has a lot of work in it.
Steven Clark

1412 days ago

My site is way less cool than the others no doubt but retro vynil albums were the idea I was after at the time. A few coffees, no time to think and reckless abandon. So 800×600 just seemed so natural for my reboot entry.

Of course as I said its probably less appealing than most there.
Joshua Kendall

1411 days ago

I care about those who chose to have a small browser window (and my 2% of visitors who have a resolution of 800×600)! My Reboot fits in 800×600 (and only took four lines of CSS to work in IE!).
Stu Hall

1411 days ago

I think 800×600 matters! If you’re gonna do fixed width you have to ensure it doesn’t bust when the window’s resized.

Although I’m currently working on a site where the client has specifically asked for horizontal scrollbars…
karmatosed

1411 days ago

Personally, I still going with if over make it fluid and make sure works in small at fluid. I am not sure it does smack a bit of people taking a time capsule back and using css for the force of evil. One thing you can never do in web is assume.
Tim Graham

1411 days ago

Browsing myself with a similar situation, and having sidebars open all the time, smaller sizes are still important. I find that 760px wide is a good standard.

For the most part, I do my best to try and fit the lowest-*common*-denominator.
Jens Meiert

1411 days ago

This trend is generally worrying, as 800×600 is not dead yet (no [1]). It would be nice if people would care about resolution support as they do with browser support, where they seem to be more careful.

Even on tech sites with a better equipped audience, one doesn’t necessarily need to drop support for 800×600 (depending on metrics and philosophy). But people don’t care, and most don’t even consider using a liquid layout addressing this resolution.

Well. The persons responsible must know when to drive readers and customers away. (I claim that I do, allowing some pages of my website being “suboptimal” when it comes to 800×600 and below.)

[1] http://thecounter.com/stats/2006/May/res.php
Rob Mientjes

1411 days ago

My site’s liquid with a max-width in ems. Like Andy said, just design for the web. It’s worth the hassle, I’d assume. Works for me, anyway.
Craig

1411 days ago

I made my reboot a few months before the “official” list but I always support down to 700px wide.

Also, my video game console catalog site (which is slowly coming along) supports PSP width down to 380px wide.
Steve Tucker

1411 days ago

Ive always liked 800×600! Fact the slimmer the better (within realistic limits!). I dont know why but aesthetically fluid layouts just dont appeal to me much…

I think you’ve outlined an important swing in web design styles John and would certainly be interested in finding a 800×600 Reboot Superstar! Hell, maybe we could do a 640×480 for oldskools sake?!
Joram Oudenaarde

1411 days ago

I agree, but only partly though :)

The iBooks are one of the few laptops that still use the 1024×800 resolution. While those iBooks are just “bitchin” to look at, they are getting a bit old resolution-wise.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have one myself. But even those crappy Dell laptops have a higher resolution. And I’m even willing to take bets that the next iBook (Mac Book?) will sport a resolution of something like 1200×900.

On the other hand; I think that professional webdev’s should make it possible to have the best of both worlds. An option to look at the website in widescreen’s ?°nd smaller screens. Perhaps an option to switch the width or something?

So my vote is: yes, but not “just” 800×600.
Owen

1411 days ago

I feel that with the amount of information available in relation to web accessibility there can be no real excuse for designs that ignore 800×600.

The only real reason I can think of is ‘We didn’t care about users who want to browse at 800×600.’ Surefire way to annoy some people and guarantee they will never come back.
Raina

1410 days ago

I think it’s important for a design to look good at 800×600 no matter what.
Red

1410 days ago

I agree that liquid designs should always be used where possible. I also think that we should not ignore those 800×600 – or even less.

who else here has problems with clients not undserstanding that? !

I recently did some work for ‘designers’. they wanted a fixed 900×600 page. and most of it was margins!

for their content pages thay still insist on 900px (‘centered’!) width – again alot of it whitespace.

take a look:

http://www.weddingbible.co.uk

my sister and I (she wrote the book – thay ‘designed’ it) are really quite pissed off with them (though quite pleased with our result considerring the attitudes we get from them)
Melvin Rivera

1410 days ago

man, i couldn’t agree more. even chris j. davis rebooted wider. don’t they know? it’s all about the 12”!
Miles Johnson

1410 days ago

I make sure mines 800×600 compatible on all my designs, well 99% of them.

Mine in the reboot. http://www.cssreboot.com/reboot/show/1348
Hjalle

1409 days ago

Full screen browsing is a waste of space, even with my 12” iBook. All my designes are 800*600 compatible, i think.
Emil Stenstr??m

1405 days ago

Damn you! changes mind again about resolution
ASka

1405 days ago

Would this qualify for 800×600…

http://thinkcube.com/site/test/

... it’s still work in progress…

lm

Raina

Red

ASka

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