Screen resolutions

[Marten]

Could not find the last poll on screen resolution sizes, so I thought I'd throw this out here in the Support forum.  Link courtesy of Digg.com.

http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox43-screen-resolutions.html

[Tom]

Cool.  Thanks for the link.

[Zemus]

Guess not many people are running their monitors at 1280x960 anymore, like me...

[Tom]

What I don't understand is...

"...most web sites are designed for a screen resolution of 800 x 600 pixels."

Why?  If screen resolutions are typically higher, why do people design for lower resolutions?  

I've tried to keep Quest Studios compatible with 800x600 and 1024x768, but don't plan on doing that with my next re-design.  If you design with tables and percentages, it's much easier to accommodate more than one resolution.  But tables are very limiting.  Using a 'layer' format instead, you really have to design for one resolution.  Our last website (http://russell-silversupport.com) was a hybid, designed for 800 or 1024 width, but for 768 height.  Another website we're working on is being designed specifically for 1024x768.

[Zemus]

Fancy designs typically use a lot of images which are in a set resolution. If you then use tables with percentages, the design will look bad. A lot of designers tend to just use a set resolution for the entire thing so all their images will look good. Less work and they can use a lot of images to show of their design skills.