Does the 800 Wide Limit Still Apply?

Andrew Martin Creative Director

For many years, 800 pixels wide was considered the 'safe' setting when creating a web layout. After all, a large percentage of the population were running 800x600 resolutions, and there is almost nothing more annoying than horizontal scrolling when browsing the web.

In recent years, I have always found it hard to imagine someone running 800x600, unless they were visually impaired or simply didn't know how to change the default (on some OS versions) resolution, and wondered how many people were actually still using resolutions less than 1024 pixels wide. After a quick browse around Google Analytics, the truthful answer to that question is now very few.



Below are screen captures from Analytics of three different sites which we host and maintain.


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The first site tested is a business technology-related site, with a demographic of 18+. The second site tested is aimed at homeowners, and targets a demographic of 30+. The third site is aimed at the 40 and over demographic, and, not surprisingly, as younger people tend to replace technology more often, has the highest percentage of visitors using 800x600. The real question becomes, is it now safe to switch to a base width of 1024, rather than 800? In my opinion, the answer is yes, unless there you believe that your site's audience is using unusually dated technology.

Having a wider 'canvas' certainly gives the web designer more options; can we take our advancement in web technology one step further, and stop worrying about IE 6, the thorn in the side of every web designer (that I have ever met, at least)? Sorry, friends. Not without the risk of alienating a still sizable chunk of your audience. Although IE 6 has lost a lot of market share, there are still a misguided many who choose to use a 9 year old browser - to be exact, 10.7%, 14.2%, and 12.4% of the user base in the three sites I tested.

Also, remember the consequences of excluding a small minority. In the case of a user who is still running 800x600, they will simply need to scroll left and right to view all of your site. It's far from ideal, but it could be a lot worse. An IE6 user may see your XHTML/CSS, W3C-validated masterpiece as a mangled, non-functioning mess if you choose to ignore them. In this man's opinion, we should keep our code hacks and PNG fixes on hand, but we can take solace in the fact that we now have just a little more room to work.