In a previous entry I explained why some web sites are larger than others. I talked briefly about screen resolutions and walked you through changing the resolution on your own computer screen.  Then I finished by talking about the 'unofficial' industry standard resolution settings - what most people are using and generally  in what percentages. If you are not sure what I'm talking about, please take a look at Websites are Too Big for my Computer Screen.

    Which brings up a very good question: How do we know what browser resolution people are using?

    The answer is simple: Any one can DO A SEARCH on screen resolution.  Pick your search engine of choice (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, Dogpile, Alta Vista,... the list goes on and on) enter your search words "screen resolution statistics" and click the Search button.  My search produced nearly 1 1/2 million results, of which I actually checked out the first dozen or so.

What I found is that almost nobody has exactly the same statistics, but that they all pretty much agree in general. If you'd like to have a look at some of the sites I researched, they are:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp
http://www.utexas.edu/teamweb/reports/screen_resolution/index.php?log=Mar2009.log
http://blogs.middlebury.edu/webredo/2009/02/06/2008-web-statistics-connection-speed-screen-resolution/
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/February/res.php
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=17

You are welcome to visit each of these sites (and any others you may find), compare their data for  yourself and draw your own conclusions, but in a nutshell, this is what I concluded:

1) The most popular screen resolution currently being used is: 1024 X 768  (somewhere around 35% to 40% of web users)

2) The next most popular resolution is slightly higher than 1024 X 768 (somewhere around  20% of web users)  BUT there was some disagreement of exactly which resolution was being used. Some sites said 1280 X 800, some said  1280 X 1024, and some just said 'higher'. Statistics concerning higher resolutions varied on specifics, but generally they all agreed that
the vast majority of users (between 77% and 99%) use a screen resolution of 1024 X 768 or higher.

3) The next resolution below 1024 X 768 was 800 X 600. In the past I know that this was the most popular resolution among web users, but it's day seems to be over. The above sites all agreed that less than 5% of users still have this resolution. Most say it is around 1%.

SO, what does this mean for you and me? It means that any websites we own with a fixed width of 800 pixels or less are wasting valuable space. These websites should be evaluated professionally to determine the  feasability of going to a wider format. To get an idea of how that space is wasted, take another look at the sites I gave you above. The sites "thecounter.com" and "w3counter.com" still have formats less than 800 pixels wide.  See the dead space to the left and right of their pages? That's what I'm talking about. Compare them to the other sites & see the difference for yourself.

AND, if you happen to be one of those 1% of people still using an 800 X 600 screen resolution, I invite you to review my blog post Websites are Too Big for my Computer Screen to fix that.

Thanks for your interest,

Dana