How important is it to make a website layout fit on 640 x 480 and 800 x 600 displays? For some time I have been designing with the assumption of at least 1024 x 768, but I haven’t been doing it professionally (just on my site which is just a blog that only 10-15 friends read). Does anyone have any non-anecdotal statistics about the distribution of screen resolutions from real web users?
Note 1: ‘Non-anecdotal’ means please don’t give answers like ‘I know lots of people using 640×480’ or ‘my mom runs in 800×600 so it must be really common.’ I’d rather have actual data (or links to actual data), especially if it is data about general users (rather than geeks).
Note 2: I’m not concerned with extremely-small displays like those on PDAs and cell phones (at least not at the moment). I’m just talking about desktop/laptop monitors.
I think the general assumption these days is that 1024×768 is acceptable, thats certainly the route I take. A good benchmark is to look at big sites like the BBC, they recently switched to a 1024×768 design. Thats not to say every site has to be that, for smaller sites I often stick to 800×600 just so the content doesn’t look pathetic :o)
Here is the source I often use for web statistics with its august 2008 stats showing 800×600 at 7%.