is 800 x 600 dead?

Apart from testing trackback / ping, I thought I'd try and get your comments on this
Isnt about time we dropped 800 x 600?

That pages makes me scroll right on my laptop @ 1024x768

My new layout requires at least 1024x768, but I had enough people complain about scrolling that I created a No Header style for them to use.

FireBlades.org

(Style dropdown at bottom left.)

Too many visually impaired people. It is only about 15% of my traffic, but I dont want to lose them. I brought this up on a few sites a few months ago and basically got the theory shot down by everybody.

Here are my stats based on November 15th 2005 through today. (The timeframe I've been using Google Analytics.)

1024x768 49.45%
1280x1024 19.08%
800x600 8.86%
1280x800 4.80%
1152x864 3.91%
1600x1200 3.46%
1440x900 2.00%
1400x1050 1.80%
1680x1050 1.41%
1280x768 1.00%

In my honest opinion 800X600 screen resolutions have been a thing of the past for a few years now. I personally use 1280x1024 on my 19 inch LCD (it is a gaming LCD with 12 ms) But there will always be those few stragglers who simply refuse to either upgrade their computer systems/ Monitor included or those who are set on 800x600 as their perfect resolution - making up perhaps 5-10% of the entire internet userbase today.

I wrote about this a couple weeks ago and made the front page of digg...

Is it Time to Abandon 800x600?

Congrats Brian!!!

You beat me to it then... lol

Originally Posted by briansol

I wrote about this a couple weeks ago and made the front page of digg...

Is it Time to Abandon 800x600?

The reason I brought it up a while back was I went out and bought a new flat screen monitor. Got home and realized I couldnt even use 1024x768, much less 800x600.

The largest resolution the monitor works with is 1280x1024. Try using 1024x768 or 800x600 and it is nothing but blurry. I thought it was a monitor problem until I read the book that came with it inside the box. It didnt say anything about it on the out side of the box, or on the dang display at bestbuy.

most LCD's have a "native" resolution, and look like crap at any other setting.

The answer is: you have to find out what the audience of your site uses the most.

If 99% of your site uses 1024x768 or above it would be useless to keept it 800 wide or less, that 1% just isn't that important for your traffic. You can notice them however to upgrade or change their res. Or maybe you can provide a second CSS file or something.

The point is: there is no answer for everyone at this moment.

The answer: Fluid.

The answer: Upgrade the monitor

upgrading has nothing to do with it.

I RARELY browse at the full 1440 pixels wide my resolution is set to.
My parents have a brand new computer with a 17" monitor, but cannot read it at 1024, so they use 800x600.
with more and more internet access coming from cell phones, pda's, and other devices that make out at UNDER 800x600, going even bigger make it un-usable.

The answer is fluid so that the site looks reasonable across ALL resolutions.... 460- 1280. maybe even wider... but at that point, i'd put a max-width attribute on my text, as its simply too wide to read easily. Thats's why newspapers use 4 or 5 columns across... not 1 big blerb.

I agree with you on the fluid or make it a fixed width at 780 Pixels (as I personally use – I’m not fond of fluid website designs or forum designs - unless they can keep the text formatted as originally presented.) I was halfway joking about the upgrading monitor aspect (hence the smiling wink)

It took several years to get myself to switch from 800x600 to 1024x768 and another few years to switch to 1280x1024 (if my monitor resolution would support higher, then I would go even higher)