Jakob Nielsen‘s Alertbox can be relied upon to stir controversy. Today he pronounces on the 1024×768 versus 800×600 dilemma.
Many will read his article on Screen Resolution and Page Layout and be in agreement. His simple advice is clear. Optimize for 1024×768, but don’t design solely for this size. Have a fluid design that works at any resolution, from 800×600 to 1280×1024 and beyond. IMHO that simple advice may be clear but it’s wrong. Just look at the prior posts on Good Resolutions and Screen Resolution and Style sheets to see why simple can be too simple.
Even within his own article, he has some interesting contradictions. On wide screens, he says the following:
Big monitors are the easiest way to increase white-collar productivity, and anyone who makes at least $50,000 per year ought to have at least 1600×1200 screen resolution. Starting at 1600×1200, users rarely stretch their browser windows to the full screen because few websites work well on such a wide canvas. Big windows are magic for working on spreadsheets, graphic design, and many other tasks, but not for the current paradigm of Web pages.
Then on narrow screens he says the following:
So, what about tiny screens, such as those found on mobile devices? A liquid design should scale all the way down to a phone, but don’t assume that this is how you should deliver your company’s mobile user experience. Mobile environments are special; to optimize for them, you must design a separate service that provides fewer features, is written even more concisely, and is more context aware.
This whole field is so complex that I think we’ve got to consider that new paradigm of Web pages that he suggests is needed. Until we get that, I do not believe that fluid designs are robust enough to cope with all those different screen widths that may be encountered. Very long lines of text just do not work. If only Internet Explorer had supported the max-width concept in CSS, then Jakob Nielsen could have suggested flexible design within a maximum width. It appears Internet Explorer Version 7, when it comes will support max-width, so perhaps he will change his advice at that time. Now that would be much more acceptable.
