Screen Resolution Summary
Basic Summary
In this alterbox the topic is basically advise from Jakob Nielsen about what screen resolution to design for. His advise is broken down into two answers, the simple answer and the more complicated answer. The simple answer is simply 1024 pixels by 768 pixels. This is currently the most common screen resolution, and is therefore the target resolution that must be hit. There are reasons why different screen resolutions would be used instead of 1024x768. Sometimes you are designing for a very specific audience and their most common screen resolution is different than the average persons.
Jakob Nielsen also gives advise for dealing with different screen resolution issues. His first bit of advise is to design with varying screen resolutions in mind. Do not assume that everyone will see your page from the same window because this simply is not the case. Optimize your page for the most common screen, but be sure that your page will work fine in any possible resolution. This means try to keep all the most significant information above the fold so that a person won't have to scroll down the page to find what they need. Be sure that the layout of the columns on a page will be sufficient if the resolution changes. Also make sure that your page doesn't lose its asthetic quality when the resolution changes.
This alertbox also takes unusually large screens into consideration. As far as demographics go, a person making at least $50,000 a year should have a screen resolution of at least 1600x1200. The reasons for this are various, but it has been proven that bigger screens incerase productivity. However, Nielsen notes that when people start using screens 1600x1200 or larger they usually stop stretching browser windows to take up the entire page. In fact people with larger screens typically use their screen differently, less as a single veiw space and more like a multifauceted workspace. Therefore, those with bigger screen resolutions don't necessarily need to be catered to. Besides most of the problems that arise from varying screen resolutions are typical only to resolution shrinking, not to having more space to work in. Therefore large screen resolutions don't really play into the page layout debate as heavily as extra small resolutions.
I plan to take the information provided in this alertbox and apply it in my own page layouts in several ways. First of all, I intend to make less of my elements a static resolution. I learned this week that having my navigation bar width determined by percentages is unreliable and works best static so that it doesn't begin to overlap other body content on a page, but this does not mean that all elements are better transfixed into a specific position. In fact, this article points out that there are hazards involved in that as well. I plan to keep both of these things in mind as I work on layout for the web.
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March 31, 2008 12:07 PM