In 2006 I published a report about browser sizes. The point of this report was primarily to visualize that it was not the size of the screen that matters, but the size of the browser window. Now, two years later, many things have changed.
The size of people's screens has changed a lot in the past years, but so has how people use the internet. If we look the screen size itself, almost everyone have high-res screens. On this site about 1% still browse using 800x600, and less than 20% use 1024x768. Almost everyone browse the internet using 1280x800 or above. That is a big change.
If we instead take a non-tech site, like a website from a clothing company, we see a slightly higher percentage of 1024x768 usage - at 30%, but 800x600 is still in the 1% range. 800x600 is long dead.
But as I also found in 2006, the size of people's screens doesn't correspond to the size of the browser. In 2006 I found that as the screens get bigger, the size of the browser stays pretty much the same - around 1300px in width.
The big question is; with this increase is screen resolution, what size should I design for? And that is actually a pretty simple thing to answer. You should design for a maximum width of 980px.
You see the internet has changed a lot over the past two years. It used to be just about the desktop browser. That was the only way people used the internet. Today that is no longer the case. Today people browse the internet using mobile phones, gaming consoles and embedded windows - apart from using the desktop browser.
If you are smart, you should design your site so that it can be used on every modern device.
And here is a trick. Every modern mobile browser has a default width of 980px. That is the width a web page is rendered in. Your site does not fit on a mobile browser (even when you zoom out), If you make your site larger than 980px.
So you need to make it less than 980px in order to design a page that works well on all modern devices - including mobile phones and desktop browsers. And, it turns out that 980px is also a very comfortable size to use in general.
Do the smart thing. Forget about the size of people's screens, design for a maximum width of 980px. Then your site will work (nearly) everywhere.
The crap the old media people put out is simply staggering, especially from the constant barrage from people trying to save the newspapers. The latest is this version of "We need to change copyright laws to save newspapers."
In the midst of the media's frantic search for a viable business model, we often hear media executives telling us that people *want* to see ads in traditional magazines. And it's true. In traditional magazines, ads actually work.
Every year, Oriella PR is doing a study among journalists on how they see the future of media, and what they focus on.
As much as I like the views of Jeff Jarvis, I do not like his views on monetization. He basically says that content has to operated at a loss.
There was a great comment in my article "How to really stop piracy" from Paulius, who commented on another commenters suggestions that movies should only cost $1.
Admit all the changes faced by news organizations, like the lack of monopoly, real-time reporting, creating original content, and the disappearance of print, there seems to be one element that most news people still do not understand. There is no distribution market on the internet - it's a link economy.
Yesterday, I updated to iOS 4 on my iPhone (like everyone else), and downloaded iBooks. The iOS 4 is nice, pretty fast, and a welcome upgrade. But iBook was a disaster.
I have been playing around with my iPad for a few days, and I noticed the Reuters App. It is a very well-made news app, which gives you a quick look at the latest headlines. And it extends to be a kind of mini Bloomberg market and stock watch.
The iPad has arrived, and the media industry is saved. Of course, when I say it has arrived, what I really mean is that it is now available in the US. And when I say that the media industry is saved, I really mean they think they are saved.
The social web is starting to sound more and more like the dot.com days. We are in the middle of a transition. The ways we do things are radically different. What works and doesn't work seems new. And many people are getting very excited about numbers, but not the right ones.
Subscribe