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what's the standard screen res these days?
I thought it would still be a good idea to design to 8x6 but I've been asked to design a site for an apparel company and the vast majority of apparel company sites I hit seem to be designed for an optimal 1024x768 (and even then only with no tabs or favourites bar in ff)

I guess it's a narrower market, but I'd appreciate your opinions...

1024x768 min.

Well in feburary, the site I worked on that got 6million uniques a year had 40% of users with 8x6 or smaller.

ok, but what market? I'm more interested in getting an idea of what newer computers are defaulting to (I frankly have no idea). I know it's uptrending to bigger & bigger, but what I'm curious about is whether 8x6 i s still a default for a majority of consumer goods target audiences. For youth I know it's not, but like I said, I'd appreciate your opinions...

street and sport activewear/accessories is the specific market, but apparel in general is relevant. It's also meant as a "showcase" site, not a retail site.

add this to the mix:
nike, volcom & billabong are designed to 1024x768 (to varying degrees).


Ironically reebok's US site default does 8x6 but also streams video & I imagine your average 8x6 user wouldn't be surfing dsl...

a lot of apparel sites are going big, but it really depends on the specific audience, for example one of my larger clients, is an apparel company, reef, and a huge amount of their audience is from south america and they truly are behind the US regarding computer equipment, so we stay with 8x6 to play it safe

If you design the site so that it scales to utilize the available screen real estate then you don't have to worry about screen/browser resolution. Good design will make it a non issue.

Last I saw, about half the web is 1024x768. 25% bigger. 25% still at 8x6.

i never design for 8x6 anymore unless specifically requested by the client.

if its for an apparel company, definite do 1024x768, anyone looking at clothes online will most likely be within a younger age bracket, who would more than likely all have new(er) computers with higher screen resolution.....only old folks and occasional internet users are still on 8x6.

I think as designers you need to aim to push everything to at least 1024*768 - if people consistantly find themselves scrolling about in their resolutions they will be forced to up the res and we are all happy.

I know from XP onwards it would be unusual to find someone using 800*600 and with the release of vista since I can only assume the users unaware of how or why to change a resolution will have a defult 1024 anyway..

I would hope that anyone interested in apparel would be fairly interested in how things appear so 800*600 would be a seriously limited canvass.

This is how I feel, too - especially for an apparel site, if you don't have disposable income for a new computer you probably don't buy new clothes much - then agin, one of our senior salesmen still calls it a "web sight" and doesn't know a jpg from a pdf (literally) so for all I know he might still be surfing 640x480.

Originally posted by: Arsis
If you design the site so that it scales to utilize the available screen real estate then you don't have to worry about screen/browser resolution. Good design will make it a non issue.

See, this is the kind of talk I keep hearing in the back of my mind.

How about if I at least design so there's no side scrolling at 8x6 and the main nav is above the fold?

Bear in mind that not everybody has their browser maximised or they may have have sidebars open (history, search, bookmarks, Opera panels) thereby limiting their browsing real estate.

Probably best to pick a range - say 740px through to 1200px and design an elastic layout. Using min-width will give scrollbars to those (few) users on smaller resolutions and max-width will prevent the layout looking like a whitespace festival for those on higher resolutions. Use relative units for sizing - percentages or ems. IE6 can be brought into line through css expressions (max-width example) or CSS shennanigans (min-width example).

Don't worry too much about "above the fold". Vertical scrolling is not the big issue it's been made out to be.

Originally posted by: br3n
I think as designers you need to aim to push everything to at least 1024*768 - if people consistantly find themselves scrolling about in their resolutions they will be forced to up the res and we are all happy.

Tsk, that's the sort of attitude that brought about sites that use javascript to resize the browser window and thereby piss off visitors. Control freak designers!

Browsers do not have fixed dimensions like in print nor should they be forced to have them. Some additional planning when designing a web layout is the answer. Otherwise we may as well go back to "This site is best viewed in Internet Explorer 7 at 1024x768, maximised and with no sidebars open".

Truly flexible design is great for text-based sites, but this is going to be image heavy, and I'm not just talking thumbnail galleries.

Basically I can't have an image bigger than 776x410 (less top nav) .... which is fine at 8x6 but is seriously lame-o at 1000x578....

I kind of like this: lusciousclothing.com (though I'll have a shitload more nav content than that & at least 4 different layouts to accomodate the section content)

but really I know what my guys want is something like this: billabonggirls.com (which looks shit less than 1280x1024, though it would work well sized down) and short of an swf whose display size is percentage based (which will inevitably give lousy pixel averaging) I don't really see how I could make it look good at 8x6 & 1024 x768 both without lots of graphic padding like column bgs and whatnot, which is sort of not the point.

I'll probably end up giving them something like this:goorin.com though (which also looks remarkably good at 8x6), just to keep it flexible, though their layout is static, and I'd let it resize with the browser more. It just seems so table-heavy BLAH.

But I guess that's what makes a good web designer, making lots of content packed into stupid little cells look good and work well.

Though I'd like to listen to the "1024x768 or fight" crowd, in good conscience I need to accomodate the 8x6 dorks too. Bloody bicycles on my information highway.

OLD FAITHFUL

It's last date is January 2007, though... they've been slacking off of late, that puppy used to be updated monthly back in the good ol' days...

That is certainly food for thought...
At least nobody's 640x480 any more!

definitely do 1024 at a minimum. Unless it's a site for granny pron.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen recommends 1024x768. HOT XXX SCREEN RESOLUTION PORN

i'd say go 1024-768.

I'm currently doing our new site at that, but the main content, including main nav, sidebar and other stuff is all ~900px, so even at that res and the browser isn't maximized it's alright.

my C64 easily does 320x240













...with 4096 colors in HAM mode!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by: arigato

Originally posted by: Arsis
If you design the site so that it scales to utilize the available screen real estate then you don't have to worry about screen/browser resolution. Good design will make it a non issue.

See, this is the kind of talk I keep hearing in the back of my mind.

Then perhaps you should wear your head backwards.

There's a million ways to go about scalable design. If you can't use Flash there's plenty of good Ajax libraries can be used to manage modularised content, scaling divs, scrolling etc. I guess it all comes down to budget and how willing the cient is to experiment a little.

Or, just not using an image bigger than 776x410 (less top nav).


In the end, the client greenlighted 1024x768 but I've decided to do something that gives the "impression" of a big image, and work with a combo of bgs & dynamic content. Still at the comping stage, so I have some room to "guide" the project.

It will be optimised for 1024x768 but still looking decent and usable at 8x6.

Thank you for your opinions, gentlemen, I appreciate your input.