Screen Resolution IS important!

There is an excellent site that I often refer my clients to which keeps up-to-date metrics of most any kind of information you are seeking - http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp

It is important (when you go to this site) to review all the links and it is also kind of fun to 'take the tour' - so to speak.

What I really like about it, is one of the things about our ZENCART forum. Both sites are loaded with good information, lots of detail, and all the 'opinions' are carefully monitored, so that we all receive the best information. Thank you ZENCART forums.

By the way - GEEK420 - I think I am the oldest GEEK here (not sure), but like you, I still find this stuff to be "brain fertilizer." I will be 69 next Sunday - July 5 - and please keep on keepin' on.

regards
jund

Forgot to give you more exact navigation info -
Once you are on the home page click on Web Building > Web Browsers. The Web Browsers page has links to Browser statistics...

Those are all great suggestion. Here is my rule of thumb. I use google analytics and after months of data I reviewed the results and then choose the most optimal resolutions for user that use my site.

Here is an example of my results for the week:

1024x768 30.05%
1280x1024 15.54%
1280x800 15.05%
1440x900 9.64%
1680x1050 8.57%
1920x1200 3.62%
1152x864 2.94%
800x600 2.47%
1280x768 1.94%
1600x1200 1.27%

So I use 1024x768 for my site. By using this size I am well within exceptable screen size for 97% of my cutomers. I also use a tool that is a firefox addon that is just like the tool NightFrye suggests but you can use right in your browser..

Here's the link Firesizer.. Hope this is useful information..

Thanks for the post!! This is really helpful for miss newbie (me!) as I'm helping to design a few websites for friends/family..

Cheers!:clap:

What file would I change to edit the resolution of the page, to make it bigger, extend it out more?

No PHP files; most styling is done in your stylesheet (/includes/templates/your_template/css/stylesheet.css).

#mainWrapper is the element that encloses all the rest and sets the page width (for most templates).

It would be nice to have a script which detected size and made browser zoom adjustments or some such effect, accordingly.

I've also designed my site for the more popular 1024x768, but it looks better if you zoom in one notch - I didn't want to get greedy with the borders. ;)

There probably is some javascript script that does that, somewhere...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thedjphat

It would be nice to have a script which detected size and made browser zoom adjustments or some such effect, accordingly.

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A very dangerous idea.

Different browsers zoom differently. Some zoom everything, some just the text, some both. And they zoom at different rates, and there's no guarantee those rates will remain consistent across browsers.

This would also cut across the philosophy under which browser standards are developed and browsers are built, which says that features like zooming should be under user control. If they've set their zoom to a particular settings that works for them, the site shouldn't override their preference (or for partially sighted people, their need).

Here is a crude list from my shop ... Sample is from the past few months with around 50000 visitors.

The list represents visitors in % that could browse the site without horizontal scroll at a given layout width...

Eg. 97,2% of my visitors could view my shop without horizontal scrolling if the sites layout had a width of 750px.

750 97,2%
800 96,3%
900 95,9%
1000 95,8%
1100 86,3%
1200 85,0%
1300 57,6%
1400 46,0%
1500 35,9%
1600 35,6%
1700 16,4%
1800 16,2%


As you can see... the "huge" drop happens at about 1200px, but currently I'd suggest a width of 1000px or 980 or so which seems to be popular atm without making the site too narrow.

A valid point noting is that many people have all sorts of "bars" etc on their screen takin up screen estate ... for example ubuntu linux uses unity as GUI now which has a ~100px bar on the left side of the screen, which many people do not make autohide.

Also please note the post dates when looking up these statistics. Do not build your site around outdated information.