What monitor resolution should your website be created for nowadays?
When I first started in design over ten years ago, the trend was to create a website that suited a monitor with display settings of 640×480 resolution. Soon after 800×600 became the standard resolution that many designers still create websites for nowadays. However, if my statistics are anything to go by, many of these sites can now be safely updated to at least 1024×768, yet still be within an efficient range for the majority of their visitors.
Displayed below is a screen shot of my statistics showing what monitor resolutions Hypergurl visitors are currently using.
It's clear to see that the old 800x600 is starting to faze itself out with only 8.1 percent of visitors now using this resolution. As you will also notice, 1024x768 is the most popular setting, taking a large chunk of the pie with 32%. This is closely followed by 1280x1024 with 21.2% and 1280x800 with 15.2%.
What's also interesting to me is the fact that there are 17 different monitor resolutions listed. Much unlike the mid 90's when you might have seen only 2 or 3 at the most. This of course makes website design all the more challenging.
I'd be interested in hearing what resolutions you create your websites for and what your own statistics say about your visitors monitor settings. Feel free to leave a comment with your own thoughts.
 | Want to learn more about designing a website or improving an existing one? Subscribe to Website Design Tips today for free. |
Comments (2)
I've always felt you need to design for the 800 pixel users, but that leaves a lot of dead space for the 1280 or 1600 pixel viewers. We're definitely seeing widers resolutions, especially with wide screen LCD's becoming the norm, so it's becoming more common to design for 1024 or even 1280 px. With stylesheets, it's easy to design multiple layouts depending on the user's resolution.
Posted by Ryan | February 4, 2008 6:55 PM
Posted on February 4, 2008 18:55
Thanks for such statistics. It is very useful for me. Regards, Wertok Borero.
Posted by Borero | February 5, 2008 4:39 PM
Posted on February 5, 2008 16:39