Building a web site? One important question, if you’re developing (as most do) to a fixed pixel size, is how big your users’ screens are. Not just the average user, either; you should keep at least 95% of your potential audience happy. Even 1% of visitors annoyed is a risk: are they the ones deciding if they’re going to buy or recommend your product? If you exclude Mac users, for example, you’re missing out on a vocal population of important bloggers and pundits.<\/p>\n
It’s happened to me. In the late 90s I designed a multimedia project called Xstream to use an 800×600 screen, using Director. Of course, the one guy with a 640×480 screen was the guy who had to approve the thing.<\/p>\n
So, how big are their screens? Well, it’s not even that simple. On Windows, most users browse at full screen. On Mac, few do; the multi-window philosophy has been around too long. As screens get larger and full-screen browsing becomes less practical, browser sizes will become less predictable.<\/p>\n
The bottom line? If you want to please 95% of the global audience, your core content should fit within 787×423 pixels without scrolling. Not scary enough? Only about 50% of the audience can see more than 600 pixels vertically or around 1024 pixels horizontally at once.<\/p>\n Lastly, bear in mind the iPhone’s variable sizing<\/a> and lack of Flash support. It’s going to be big and you don’t want to be left out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Building a web site? One important question, if you’re developing (as most do) to a fixed pixel size, is how big your users’ screens are. Not just the average user, either; you should keep at least 95% of your potential audience happy. Even 1% of visitors annoyed is a risk: are they the ones deciding … Continue reading How big are your users’ screens?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1226,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions\/1226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}OK, enough waffle. Pretty, interactive distribution graphs for browser width<\/a> and height<\/a> from Foldspy<\/a>.<\/del>\u00a0EDIT: Sadly, this site has expired.<\/p>\n