Don't Back Down

So the other day I downloaded Sizer, a cool little utility that adds a menu item to your windows and allows you to easily snap the window to certain pre-defined sizes. This is most useful, of course, for seeing what your web site looks like at other resolutions. Not long ago, I was accused of having an unsustainable web site, at least because of the width of my template, so this is of some interest to me.

Looking at some statistics, we see that just over 54% of users browse the web at 1024x768. This can certainly explain the reason why so many people have gone to wider layouts. But that's still only half of all users. While 14% use 1280x1024, there are still almost 25% that use 800x600. That's a significant percentage to leave out in the cold. What do all these sites look like at such a small resolution? Let's take a look.

To check things out, I took five screenshots of various sites on one day. I looked at this site, Google, John Chow, Microsoft and Problogger. Before looking at the actual images, how do you think they fared? How do you think you would do in the same test? Okay, fair enough - let's take a look.

I'll go first. Don't Back Down turns out nicely at 800x600. The only complaint that I really have is that you don't get any content on the screen at all. Maybe half of the title of the first post, and the subscription information, but that's about it. I am happy that nothing is cut off that requires a side-scroll, though. That's something I don't like to do, and while I've been considering a wider format, I think I'll stick with this layout for a while longer.

It looks like Google has thought things out. There's a definite method to their madness - the sparse home page doesn't lose a single bit of functionality when being downsized. I'm content taking second place to Google. Of course, second out of two isn't necessarily a prize. Let's see how everyone else fared.

John Chow squeezes a lot of information into that small screen, but not much of it is content. He does get a couple of Popular Posts into the window, and you can get to his subscription link, but even the money-making king can't get his content into the window. Obviously it isn't hurting him, however, with no signs that his income is slowing down, so maybe cutting out the people who can't afford to upgrade their monitor isn't a bad thing!

Microsoft is a mess. Not only do they not fit much content into the window, what they do fit is promptly overwritten by a pop-up window. That just rubs salt into the wound. I mean sure, they are Microsoft and all, but come on! Surely they could have done things better here. I guess Bill Gates spent too much money building that mansion of his.

Darren at Problogger is certainly a victim of getting cut off on the right side, but he also does reasonably well by getting a decent amount of content into the window - something that both Chow and myself had a problem with (even though my window wasn't cut off!).

Now I can't compare myself with any of these folks, but I just thought it would be an interesting exercise. One thing I can't do, however, is allow for the fact that my monitors run at 1680x1050 - so any sites that are detecting monitor size and then displaying may actually show up differently for a different reported size. I think that, if done, this would probably only be Microsoft - I don't think any of the others are doing it. That doesn't mean they are, just that I don't think anyone else is.

What do you think? Is resolution important? Or should it just be ignored? John Chow and Problogger certainly do okay, without worrying about it. Should we be concerned about those out there on 800x600 monitors, or is 1024x768 the new minimum, and anything less should just be ignored?