[thelist] Higher Screen Resolutions

Christopher Marsh Christopher.Marsh at akqa.com
Fri May 21 03:39:53 CDT 2010


Fred

> In my opinion, we make normal sites for normal users. Catering to
> every user in the world is not necessarily even a goal, even if it
> where intelligent or affordable.

I take your point, but ensuring that *anyone* who requests resources from your site using *any* client does not leave feeling unhappy should be *one* goal for every commercial web developer these days.

I think that one thing to come out of this thread is that "normal" is subjective in this context - even more so given the proliferation of non-desktop (or even laptop) clients. I have an HTC HD2, which has a screen resolution of 800x480. It's fast and stable, and gives me my first truly useful mobile browsing experience. 80% (figure plucked from thin air for illustrative purposes) of the time I'll be accessing a website as a "normal" user on my laptop or desktop, but the remaining 20% of the time I'll be accessing it on my PDA. Do you really want me to be unhappy with the user experience delivered by your website 20% of the time I'm using it?

It works the other way, too - people may be a "normal" user at work, but have high resolution monitors at home. You usually can't even define what "normal" is for your target user base anyway, it's a catch-22 situation. Your logs may tell you that only users with a screen resolution of 1440xXXXX and above use your site, but what this may *mean* is that you're just making it too difficult for anyone else to bother. It's a competitive world, and the last thing you want to be doing is disappointing people - if they leave annoyed, it's unlikely they'll be back.

All IMO, of course :-)

Cheers!

-- 
Regards

Christopher Marsh


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