Most common monitor size?

[tmax]

I was wondering....
When I make my web site, I don't want my page to be too big for the screen or too small for the screen.
What is the most common size of the monitor?
Also what is the most common resolution?

I have an old 15" which is about 600x800 and a 17" 1280x1024, I don't think any one of my monitors fit into "Common" monitor.
It makes me wonder how my site looks like to the other people.

Thank you.

[teach1st]

I think you need to know your audience. The people who hit my sites are parents, kids and teachers - in general, not a high tech group at all. I've found that most still use 640x480 resolution, regardless of monitor size, so even though I run 1024x768 I keep my browsers a little smaller than 640x480 and design pages with that resolution in mind. Inexperienced AOL users who run 640x480 generally keep their browser sized even smaller. Now it's my turn to ask questions of the FQ community:
* I'm out of the new computer loop by a great distance. Are new computers configured at an 800x600 resolution out of the box now?
* I had a lot of families using Web TV last school year, and that really throws me for a loop. Does anybody know how to design for Web TV?

[Deb]

You may find this link helpful when wondering about the Internet at large.

http://www.statmarket.com/

It contains quite a few interesting statistics. It currently is showing 800x600 at the top

I haven't had a pc out of the box for a few years (TeRRa has this thing about building his own)... not a clue what they have them set at now.. but I do know when I'm browsing at the stores *too many* of them are still at 640x480

Deb

[teach1st]

Very interesting site...thanks.

[Justin]

Unless the computer store changes the settings, then most are 640 x 480, Window's default. Almost all I've seen in the computer stores are... what's really anoying is my ISP has a PC set up in the lobby on a T1 just kinda sitting there for people to play with. It has a 21" monitor, and guess what the resolution is?

I always design my sites in a 575 to 600 pixel wide table. I don't do this so much for the 640 x 480 users that aren't aware of the Control Panel in Windows, but because I cannot stand text that wraps all the way from one edge of the screen to the other at 1024 x 768 - imagine a newspaper who's text went all the way accross the page - it would not be pretty.

And using columns doesn't work for me either - scroll down, scroll up, scroll down again... and of course the 640 x 480 users would have 2 words per line in each column... I mainly like knowing that whatever res the user is running, it will look the same, although more height would fit on the screen at the higher resolutions.

As for WebTV, I personally don't care what a site looks like - you cannot make a site look anything like it does on a PC because no matter what it re-proportions everything.

The actual resolution of a TV is 320 x 400, but since it's interlaced it's effectively 320 x 200. Add to that the fact that a television blurs the pixels on purpose to rid pixelation, and you've got a very ineffective web viewing area.

Just MHO - and of course I don't claim to be a web designer - I don't have that kind of patience :)

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Ron]

Right now, WebTV accounts for less than 2 percent of the Internet. But it's growing, and if you have a good listing in Infoseek you'll see far more than 1 to 2 percent of your traffic coming from them.

Unfortunately, designing for WebTV isn't easy. It's not their resolution that makes it tough (they "effectively" see almost a full 640 pixel wide screen), but rather the color choices. Dark text on a white screen is hard to read on a TV, so sites designed primarily for WebTV use light text on a dark screen. I usually shoot for the lowest common denominator - but I won't go that low.

For a lot more information than you really want, check out this site:

http://developer.webtv.net/

Ron

[Justin]

I used to shoot for the lowest common denominator, but if we all do that, all sites will look as though we are all running Windows 3.1 with Navigator 2.0 - I don't want that...

I don't see the point in upgrading browsers if we aren't going to use the features - my site uses a little CSS, JavaScript, and some other stuff not quite supported by the old browsersaurs, but they don't rely completely on it - meaning an IE3 user would probably see my site ok, just without the extras such as the rollover images and link hover colors (which NN won't do anyway).

I just figure if you are[nbsp][nbsp]using an old browser, you are probably quite used to not being able to view a lot of sites - and you could still see mine (although I admit to not having tested it at all with anything but the 4.x and higher browsers, plus Opera 3.51).

Web TV cannot see 640 x 480 - technically you could have as many pixels accross as you like though, as a TV is analog - but there are only 400 lines and they are interlaced - 200 while scanning down and 200 scanning up. If you were try and use those interlaced lines as separate lines, it would not work really... the lines are supposed to be the next frame in the next position, allowing them to interpolate (sp?) getting rid of any pixelation.

I had a WebTV veiwer for Windows, and it rendered in a 640 x 480 window but with HUGE fonts because on a TV you would not see the small fonts.

I remember hooking the C-64 up to the TV, and running a 40 column screen, you could barely read the text. Even at 640 x 480 you can use 80 columns easily - TV is meant to show motion and stuff - not really small printed text.

I agree about the colors - light on dark always looks best on TV - putting black text on a white background causes the white to blur over the text (again, the intentional blurring). Oh, and a TV is only 24 or 30 FPS (I forget which but it's one of the two). Most monitors are 60 to 75 or higher (mine is 60 @ 1024 x 768 but can go as high as 125 at lower resolutions).

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[pc]

I just got a new computer. Everyone will think I'm crazy to get a 15" monitor but I bought a 15" Flat Panel(it displays a "true" 15" picture) and it was set at 800x600 resolution.

[Justin]

Flat panel displays are different - they are LCD displays. Each pixel is a transistor, and since you cannot alter the spacing of them like you can with the pixels on a CRT, you only get one resolution... You can't just decide to run a different number of pixels by moving them - they are physically in place, not dynamically placed on the screen via a ray gun :)

Now you can run any resolution that is an exact multiple, because it will double up the pixels - but if you tried to set it at 640 x 480, you would end up with an inch or so of blank space on all sides of the screen - go ahead and try it :)[nbsp][nbsp]It's the same as a laptop. I find it odd that it runs 800 x 600 though - usually they are 1024 x 768, even on the 13.2" laptop displays I've seen...

I prefer a CRT for that reason mainly, because I do switch resolutions sometimes, plus DOS games give you slower performance when you force them to higher resolutions (like Quake), although the video performance on some of Compaq's flat panel displays are pretty darned impressive - long gone are the days of ghosting and blur with LCD displays :D

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[pc]

I hate to argue Justin, but.... ;) I can set the resolution to 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768 and there is NO blank space around the edges. I test drove the monitor at different resolutions at a store before I bought it to check that out.


I love this monitor! So :-P

[Justin]

Ok, are you talking about an LCD screen? As in less than an inch or so deep? (like a laptop screen?)

If so, then it must double up some of the pixels to get other resolutions... that's the only way it would work. I guess they started doing that recently - I've never seen it but it has to be off... dividing it out, assuming the actual pixel resolution is 1024 x 768, it would take 1.6 pixels to make 1 - so every 1.6th pixel would be doubled up...

Technically there is no other way to display 640 pixels with 1024 transistors - I assure you the transistors do not move and rearrange themselves :)

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[pc]

Justin,
I don't know all the technical stuff, I just meant that at any resolution I set my 'puter at, there is no blank space around the edges. I still have a 15" picture on my LCD monitor. I know what you are talking about as far as blank space because my hubby's laptop does that.

[jwbutler]

While most of the older laptop screens left a black band around the display at resolutions smaller than the size of the screen, I've started to see new ones that enlarge the image to display full-screen no matter what the resolution.

Example:[nbsp][nbsp]I just recently installed a Compaq Armada 1750 with a 14" screen (1024x768) that enlarged the 640x480 image to fill the screen.[nbsp][nbsp]It all depends on the video chip installed.


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Joseph Butler
Starfleetgames.com Webmaster