How do your site stats compare to The Counter.com??

Just an update since I stopped by this thread to link to it from someplace else. My 800 x 600 stats are holding steady at around 5% now. I think it's a really good idea to track these things on your own site if at all possible because you can't rely on generic resources to match what is happening on your site.

I didn't mean to imply that it was okay to drop users of low percentages. Just to keep things in perspective. The original design of the site in question was fixed at 760 pixels (under the assumption that a lot of visitors would be browsing at 800 x 600 resolution). If you just looked at the stats from the counter you might believe that that was the right choice. It turns out that the majority is browsing at larger resolutions, which means that the layout was not optimized for the majority of visitors to this particular site. After viewing these stats I modified it to work for all visitors but work better for the majority of visitors who had higher resolutions.

The lowest common denominator is obviously very important, but where that is could change depending on your audience. Which is why you need to track your particular site. You may be optimizing for the wrong settings (which was the case for this site before). Looking at the counter's stats you'd expect the majority of the audience to be using IE 6 at 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 when in reality you could be getting quite a significant percentage using Firefox at 1280 or widescreen laptop resolutions. Your layout can never look "best" for everyone, so it's important to check your stats to make it look "best" for the majority (while still working well for the rest). You might be putting unnecessary constraints on yourself by taking the counter's stats at face value.

You might be interested in this Graded Browser Support Scheme from Yahoo. Basically, they make sure everything works best for the majority, and degrade support depending on usage.

yahoo wrote: Support does not mean that everybody gets the same thing. Expecting two users using different browser software to have an identical experience fails to embrace or acknowledge the heterogeneous essence of the Web. In fact, requiring the same experience for all users creates a barrier to participation. Availability and accessibility of content should be our key priority.

Consider television. At the core: TV distributes information. A hand-cranked emergency radio is capable of receiving television audio transmissions. It would be counter-productive to prevent access to this content, even though it’s a fringe experience.

Some viewers still have black-and-white televisions. Broadcasting only in black-and-white — the “lowest common denominator” approach — ensures a shared experience but benefits no one. Excluding the black-and-white television owners — the “you must be this tall to ride” approach — provides no benefit either.

An appropriate support strategy allows every user to consume as much visual and interactive richness as their environment can support. This approach—commonly referred to as progressive enhancement — builds a rich experience on top of an accessible core, without compromising that core.

I really like this strategy. Users with newer technology can take advantage of it while still providing something useful to the rest. Support is on a scale from the most common settings (heavy testing required) to the least common (access is provided but functionality is not tested). But, you need to look at what's happening on your particular site to decide what settings to optimize for. You also have to decide how much time you have available to work on catering to fringe users.

For my circumstances, keeping a layout fixed at 760 pixels was the equivalent of broadcasting television in black and white. Sure, everyone saw the same thing, but the 95% of visitors who had higher screen resolutions were not receiving an optimum experience. This might have been a different case if that number was only 75% as in the counter's numbers.

What program do you use to get those stats Megan? I have awstats and webalizer but they don't show you stuff like that.

So do you prefer liquid layouts over fixed? I have pretty big monitors, I think the resolution is 1650 by 1050 or something like that, and I still prefer viewing websites that are fixed with to ~770px. When they expand to the full width of the screen, it is really, really hard to read the text on the page. Huge long lines of text are harder to read than 30-50 words per line at about 770px.

And another reason I would used fixed over fluid is that you have more control of how the content is layed out. For example, if you are trying to optimize your site for AdSense, then you have complete control of where the ads are. However with a fluid layout, your ads' position can change when the window size changes. Not a problem for some webmasters, but it is something to consider.

The site I develop at work is currently flexible between (roughly) 800 and 1000 pixels. That takes advantage of available space the majority of our visistors have but prevents it from getting too stretched out at higher resolutions.

Fixed vs. Flexible for me depends on the design. Fixed at 800x600 can get really tight if you're trying to fit in a lot of information. And the majority of your visitors have more space so you might as well take advantage of it if you can. I don't mind using fixed at 800 on smaller projects like my blog where there isn't that much to put on the screen so the extra space isn't needed. The problem here is that you have to support 800x600 (and anyone who otherwise browses with a window around that size) so your'e stuck at that minimum width. What happens when you want to take adavnatage of larger resolutions? That's where flexible designs come in.

I think it makes sense to optimize for the majority of visitors, which is what you need to watch your stats for. If you're actually getting 20% at 800x 600 then you're going to have to make it look good for them. However, for most sites the most common resolution now is 1024 x 768, which means the site should really look best for them. You can't optimize for all resolutions at once, you have to pick one to target primarily. It can work in many, but it's really only going to look "best" in one (maybe two if you're going flexible).

I also think that smaller resolutions aren't going away. There will always be smaller laptops and other devices coming in with all different sizes of screens. Designs need to be able to adapt to what people are using.

ETA: I would like to have a better idea of what users of really big monitors generally prefer. You often here guesses about what these peop[le actually do and prefer, but opinions seem to vary quite a lot. And I think that's probably the case - some browse full screen and want fixed sites, others browse full screen and want the sites to use up the space, and others don't browse full screen and want sites to scale to whatever width they've got. There doesn't seem to be a consensus here.

We have awstats but had to install a special add-on that gets the screen resolution. It only shows the top 5.