[dragonfly]

I've been looking at our analytics, and noticed that quite a few customers are using screens at 1024x768 with a couple down as low as 800x600, with this in mind I think a few minor changes maybe required to move some important links up the page.

However redisgning for 800x600 would be quite severe, is it worth it, or would a few tweak for 1024x768 be sufficient?

[OldWelshGuy]

Do both and have screen detection scripts running. that way you serve up the ideal version for the visitor. happy days all round (apart from paying for a couple of sites. Og and also make sure you make life easy for the bots to only spider one version

[Alvin]

Originally Posted by OldWelshGuy

Do both and have screen detection scripts running. that way you serve up the ideal version for the visitor. happy days all round (apart from paying for a couple of sites. Og and also make sure you make life easy for the bots to only spider one version

Hi James.see how nice I am when I want something.

How does the screen detection script work,and will it go straight on an existing site.

I simply make sites for 1024 x 768.

Alvin

[OldWelshGuy]

yep no problem. If you build a site for 1024 x 768, then you can also have an 800x600 version and redirect using javascript. it woun't affect the spiders as they don't have JS enabled (apart from the spam detection bot Google has)

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript"> <!-- if ((screen.width>=1024) && (screen.height>=768)) { window.location="highres.html"; } else { window.location="lowres.html"; } //--> </SCRIPT>

I would robots exclude the low res version for safety's sake though.

[OldWelshGuy]

I am not a designer though, nor a coder, so am not sure how that runs with higher scripts, i don't use it anymore

[An Oasis]

screen.width>=1024

= takes the view on any browser equal to or greater than 1024 screen width to your high res version.

The other alternative is to use CSS and have a fluid layout.

[Alvin]

Originally Posted by An Oasis

The other alternative is to use CSS and have a fluid layout.

The only time I had a fluid layout was when I had to buy a round of drinks down the pub in 1972,?

Alvin

[Cracking Media]

Our web stats show very few UK, Europe or US users using less than 1024 x 768. I would definitely go for a web page design that fitted 1024 as a minimum as a design for 800 pixels width looks so tiny on a wider screen. Or as you say use a fluid design to fill all of the available width.

[awebapart]

Originally Posted by dragonfly

I've been looking at our analytics, and noticed that quite a few customers are using screens at 1024x768 with a couple down as low as 800x600, with this in mind I think a few minor changes maybe required to move some important links up the page.

Google analytics stats show screen sizes but don't forget that not everybody runs their browser maximised, so someone with a larger screen resolution might also prefer to run their browser in a window, and that window might also have available browser display space in the region of 800x600-1024x768.

Not many studies have been done on this, most stats show screen sizes, rather than common browser display sizes, but here is one browser display size study (which also mentions some browser javascript code).

You mention moving important links up, so you might also have this issue of important links not in display (having to scroll down to see them) with wider resolution screens that have less height, e.g. 1024x600 (WSVGA), found on some smaller laptops.

Originally Posted by dragonfly

However redisgning for 800x600 would be quite severe, is it worth it, or would a few tweak for 1024x768 be sufficient?

I wouldn't call it severe, there are other reasons and advantages for designing for 800 widths, and we mention some of these in our browser screen size article.

If you are catering for 800 widths, you can do it with simple elastic coding, something you should be able to do without having different versions of and different urls for your site. Since you are currently using tables you can also have elastic layouts without css by using percentages in your table column widths, even your top branding logo could be made elastic if necessary with gradient colours that blend out to the edges into areas of constant colours. With our old company website, which does needs an update (it is quite old), we achieved an elastic layout with simple tables, in fact a layout which is supposed to be very difficult to achieve with CSS, the so-called 'holy grail' 3 column fixed/elastic layout.

You can also go the non elastic different width approach using different .css and different .js files at runtime avoiding different html file urls, based on javascript code, but this requires more advanced coding.

[An Oasis]

Originally Posted by Alvin

The only time I had a fluid layout was when I had to buy a round of drinks down the pub in 1972,?

Feel for you Alv, must have been a really traumatic experience, certainly not for the faint hearted.