How screen resolutions have changed
Its interesting to see how screen resolutions have changed over time.
The following are pie-graphs of the screen resolutions, of visitors to computer-aid.com.au, during november, for the years 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
The most obvious change over the last 4 years, has been the decrease of 1024×768 from about 47% to 23.5%
1280×1024 has decreased from 22% to 15%
The rapidly fading 800×600 has gone from 8% to 1.5%
In contrast, 1280×800 has increased from 6% in 2006, up to 18% in 2009
Also, 1440×900 has gone from 2% to 11%
So what does this all mean?
Well, if you design websites, you need to be increasingly aware of what a website might look like when viewed at different resolutions.
Just 4 years ago, catering for top 2 resolutions of 1024×768 and 1280×1024 covered 68% of viewers
But now, the top 2 resolutions (1024×768 and 1280×800) only covers 41% of viewers.
Its obvious, that with the increasing popularity of LCD monitors and laptops, has resulted in a much greater variety of screen resolutions.
Its also obvious that wide-screen resolutions are on the increase (but is this due to true consumer demand? Or is it a case of LCD makers catering to a small group of people who want to view wide-screen movies?).
Whats amazing, is that 1024×768 and 1280×1024 are still very popular for a 4:3 format.
Since most monitors are now widescreen LCDs, how can we have so many 4:3 format screen resolutions?
The answer is simple, as I see it happen very often: people will buy widescreen monitors/laptops, but to make the words “visible”, they usually lower the screen resolution to 1024×768, even though this results in a screen with objects that have a slight horizontal stretch.
This seems to show that, for most people, making screen fonts readable is more important than keeping screen objects in correct proportion.
Given that Vista and W7 still have an inconsistent approach to screen font sizes, I’d say that the 4:3 format will continue for quite a while yet, despite the increased number of widescreen monitors.
nice traffik …..
1680 x 1050 here. I bought a widescreen LCD for my desktop. The thing I like most about widescreen is that you don’t have to look at websites full screen. I often have a primary web browser taking up the left half, then chat windows in the bottom right corner and a movie/lecture/TV playing in the top right corner. This means that the space the website gets is effectively 800×1000, which many websites fit nicely into. I think the rise of widescreen monitors will not mean a rise in non-standard viewing sizes.
Great information on a subject that I have “NO” idea about but you do make it so easy to understand, and for that I thank you. jj
Interesting research. Serious bloggers may also consider screen size to fit smartphone screen.
richie@blogtactic
I’m running on 1440×900, which seems to be more popular on laptops.
I really haven’t seen too many websites where the layout really disagrees with my screen resolution. I have seen a few where they use a fixed size area for their content, which generally results in the area being pretty small on my screen, but it isn’t really that bad.
I think the best thing website owners can do is make sure their site dynamically scales to fit the screen size.
At any rate, an interesting read.