Apr 29 2008
Is it time to ignore 800 by 600 Resolution yet?
When I started designing WordPress Themes for the first time, my machine was set to 1024 x 868. 
If you look at my designs like “FastTrack“, “GreenFlower” etc, you would see that they are designed for people using 800 x 600 resolution.
Recently I saw a post titled Blog Re-themeing on some website. The owner of that website moved away from FastTrack as he felt it is “too narrow”.
I would like to ask you people for your opinions. Are we at a point where we can safely ignore the 800 x 600 and start designing for 1024 x 768 resolution?
Please pour in your thoughts.
Thanks.
This is a website by Sadish Bala, created to share the news, tips and tricks on using WordPress.
# Andrewon 29 Apr 2008 at 2:20 pmI think there is no necessity to design for 800 x 600 any more, but that is not to say that it isn’t the best option in some cases.
# Jan Dembowskion 29 Apr 2008 at 2:41 pmWell, I vote for themes designed for 1024×768 (and I did comment that FastTrack was perfect
).
I think that 800×600 is more of an exception these days and probably can be left behind.
# Patrick D.on 29 Apr 2008 at 3:00 pmI used FastTrack for the longest time and I found it more narrow than I liked. I widened it and loved it. I think 800×600 is dead. Of the 25,000 visits to my blog since August 2007, only 2% use 800×600 or lower resolution. It’s a thing of the past.
# Sadishon 29 Apr 2008 at 11:19 pmThanks guys.
my website’s stats also points out that only about 2 to 3 percent of people are using such a resolution.
Lets see what other people are saying.
# sabon 30 Apr 2008 at 4:42 pmGreat themes, love looking through your work and I have helped people integrate them onto their wordpress sites. A word about the 800×600 layout question - I am no experienced website designer (I have mostly worked on the basis of other people’s work (such as Sadish - thanks again) ) but I was just wondering - is the happy medium a resizeable page design. One that fills the window (no matter what resolution) together with a minimum width (possibly set at a screen sized for 800×600).
Anyways, it is just my thought and there may already be solutions for this that is common knowledge. Take note that I am no knowledgeable web designer, just some guy with enough knowledge to get himself in trouble.
Keep up the great work Sadish - wordpress rocks!
# Adamon 30 Apr 2008 at 6:02 pmDesigning for 1024 doesn’t mean forgetting about those on 800 - a page designed at 1024 should be careful to have all the essential call to actions within the 800px horizontal fold, so that they can still be seen by that 2% of visitors.
Also don’t forget that this measurement is screen width NOT browser width, and percentage of people won’t have their browser maximised.
Isn’t it more pertinent to ask at what percentage does a metric stop being worth catering for? The consensus above seems to be that 2-3% of visits is a small enough audience to forget about - would this threshold be the same if the metric under consideration was Flash installations, Browser versions or colour depth?
# Sadishon 01 May 2008 at 9:24 amThanks Sab and Adam.
Sab,
The resizable page design also known as “Fluid Width” designs have its own merits and demerits.
Adam,
You raise an important thing to consider. not all people have their browser window in full maximized position.
Also, we can not just ignore something just because it is only used by 3% of the audience. In some cases, a 3% of the crowd will account for a couple of thousand people.
What I am trying to understand from this post is, if many designers start to design only for a minimum of 1024 x 768, will you be OK with that?
# Vishwason 02 May 2008 at 12:02 pmI’m all for the 1024 X 768 resolution..
I have an interesting proposition: You could design a theme in 2 resolutions (800 X 600 and 1024 X 768) and maybe someone could come out with a plugin which could detect the users screen resolution and change the theme accordingly… but that’s asking too much
Personally I’ve been asking for a fluid width theme from you for quite a while because I know from my site visitor stats, that I’ve got a 70-30 ratio favoring wider formats. I’d really appreciate if you can come out with wider versions of your themes. That’s my P.O.V.
# Adamon 02 May 2008 at 9:21 pmI think k2 already has the ability to remove columns for narrower screens automatically
http://www.getk2.com
# Vishwason 04 May 2008 at 1:41 amI tried K2 RC6 and it really blows… hey sadish, how about making one K2 style ? The dynamic sidebar width is something really interesting. Unfortunately all the available styles lack the color selections and simple fonts as your themes
# netsteron 04 May 2008 at 6:14 amabout 3 - 4% uses resolution 800 x 600 to my site and about 48% uses 1024×768 resolution.
cheers
# Paulon 05 May 2008 at 3:22 pmWith my dual 24″ monitors at home you’d think my reaction would be to dump 800 x 600. Except I also have an Eee. I think that you will see more small screen ultra portable devices in the future that would benefit from 800 x 600.
# Tomon 06 May 2008 at 11:38 pmYes. It is time to move on to 1024×728.
# Rudion 10 May 2008 at 11:27 pm800 x 600 is outdated. 1024 x 768 is up to date.
# markoon 11 May 2008 at 1:57 amOh well I have to chime in here, sorry. And vote for good old 800 x 600. Personally I use a 12 year old CRT monitor - it will do 1024×728 (max) but does not like it. And I do some serious pro design work - posters and 3D on it too.
This year I will be going split screen and get a 24inch widescreen monitor with HD resolution.
On principle I don’t like throwing anything which is working away. (Still use a Psion 3c - the only computer which has never crashed on me).
Yes increasingly websites are in higher resolution which means scrolling across if you use 800×400. My default page is Yahoo and they do deliver automatically index.narrow for old fogeys. So a dual resolution offering from sites would be excellent.
Many thanks for the excellent Spotlight wordpress theme which I am tweaking at the moment.
# Ryanon 19 May 2008 at 11:46 pmMy screen resolution is 1280×800, however I still keep my browser around 800px wide most of the time. I find it very annoying when sites can not operate at this width.
I prefer to make my themes flexible down to 800px where possible, although sometimes this is not doable without causing other problems. Plus I get lazy sometimes and prefer to stick to fixed widths.
Support for smaller widths is becoming important though as mobile browsers become more common.
# Max Watsonon 24 May 2008 at 9:59 pmIt’s 2008 and you’re still supporting 800×600? I decided several years ago that 800×600 was a thing of the past. Who in their right mind would still be using a 14″ CRT monitor anyway? Well, excepting developing nations, nobody.
I even think 1024×768 is a relic. Most notebooks and LCD monitors sold these days support a minimum of 1280×800.
As for mobile browsers, supporting 800×600 would no better help them. On my windows mobile phone both the Opera and IE browsers frequently do a very fine job of resizing content.
My 23″ monitor always runs in 1920×1200–I wish more websites took proper advantage of that.
# Christineon 07 Jul 2008 at 10:50 pmAdd me to the long list - less than 2% of my site’s visitors use 800×600 resolutions, and I intentionally made my business site more than 800 pixels wide. Matter of fact, since it is a photography site, I wanted it to be able to support photos that were themselves 800 pixels wide - so it does. I love having the large photos there.
# koewon 10 Jul 2008 at 8:03 amIs it time to abandon 800×600? Absolutely not! Thanks to new mobile devices - like Apple iPhone/iPod Touch, Asus Eee and the likes - there’ve been an increasing need to design with fluid (liquid) dimensions in mind.
For instance, iPhone’s display resolution is 480×320 pixels. Asus’ Eee PC’s got 800×480 (models up to 702) and thereafter 1024×600. If there’s something I’ve realised, is that fluid widths are more and more important thanks to mobile devices.
# bobon 12 Jul 2008 at 12:17 amNo way! I like your themes, specifically because they can be viewed well in 800×600 by a variety of users. If you are using your blog as part of a business website, would you really want to take a 3-4% hit in visitor conversion because of some designer’s arrogant screen resolution decision?
Heck no!!!
Maybe it is ok for some types of sites (like photography, professional portfoliotos, etc) to scoff at 800×600, but not sites that are used by businesses. 800×600 is far from dead for business use!!
# Michelleon 31 Jul 2008 at 5:55 pmI prefer the larger size too, but think that almost all pages should be designed where you can easily shrink them to 800 x 600. … My laptop is set at 1680 x 1050. I usually shrink stuff down to take up about half of the screen width so that I’m not switching back and forth between windows.
Whenever I run across a site that forces me to keep the window more than 50% wide - I try to find the info somewhere else.
# Lozboon 22 Aug 2008 at 7:29 pmWith the popularization of the new netbooks ultraportables we must still stick to smaller width designs (like 800×600). I wouldn’t drop it anytime soon. It’s a pain in the neck to still be designing like this, but a lot of people still has smaller resolutions, or laptops, or mobile devices (not cellphones, but these UMPC which don’t run a mobile but a full desktop OS).
But as I always say, it’s up to the target audience. Your people’s stats will help determine this and most (if not all) other considerations. Maybe your users still have smaller screens, each project’s target may vary.
I would encourage developers not to quit designing for smaller screens.
# Al3looon 29 Aug 2008 at 2:43 pmHi !
I came to this page while I was searching .. ^-^
I think the best designer who makes his design flexible to all people, and with all resolution and browsers.
So your site will be the confluence for all people.
Also, I think this resolution (800 * 600) is very small to see all the page clearly!
Thats what I thougt ! nice site &
Best Regards,