Is it time to abandon 800x600? » YugaTech | Philippines Tech News & Reviews

Is it time to abandon 800×600?

Yahoo releases a beta preview of their new site, and excludes 800×600 viewing without horizontal scroll bars.

Ten years ago, we’re all concerned about sites that should fit well with a 640 x 480 pixel screen size. Five years ago, most sites didn’t bother to support it and optimized their designs for the minimum 800 x 600 pixel.

In this day and age of Web 2.0, cheaper computer parts/monitors and much better technology, is it time to abandon 800 x 600? I believe so.

The percentage of users running on 800×600 is small enough (less than 10% IMO) that we can trade their discomfort for more “above the fold” space and better user experience for the majority.

Someone once said (I think it was Leo Laporte on an episode of TWiT, but not sure) that we should not allow those who are technologically behind to prevent us from making use of technology’s the full potential to move forward. Just take a good look at the gaming industry — they have graphics cards far more expensive than an entire home PC.

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[tags]monitors, screen resolution, screen size[/tags]

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

4 Comments

Yahoo Fan says:

19 years ago

I noticed that they were doing some testing of this a few months ago…

http://www.jonpayne.net/?p=114
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Manuel Viloria says:

19 years ago

Nope, I won’t abandon over 16% of my visitors.

Besides, even if everyone use 1024 pixel-wide monitors, it would still be easier to read 700 pixel-wide text.
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J. Angelo Racoma says:

19 years ago

Nope. Not everyone uses browsers maximised. I, for one, prefer to have my browser floating just above my other windows (IM, folders, etc.), be it on my 1024×768 laptop screen or 1600×1200 desktop screen.
- Reply
luis says:

19 years ago

The worldwide percentage is actually closer to 20% still using 800×600.

(http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)

The mistake that people usually make when trying to decide which minimum-resolution to support is to simply look at their visitor stats and assume that the 800×600 portion is decreasing. That may be true, but there are 6.5 billion people in this world that have yet to go online (and are expected to do so quite soon), and I don’t think they will be hopping on with anything more than the minimum 800×600.
- Reply