Screen resolution and screen proportion

Below usage data are obtained from a limited period of time of testing, resulting in 114'000 visitors creating 253'000 Pageviews. Visitors coming from 200+ countries across the globe. Thus statistically the below data are fairly accurate to approx less than 1% error and most likely can be transformed into useful feedback data for any other global site.

When designing your pages you need to know how many pixels of information horizontally and vertically are displayed at once without scrolling on your surfers desktop monitor. The below detailed screen resolution statistics show you a typical average surfers situation. The data are extracted specially for the purpose of THIS article with the help of Google analytics. For detailed visitors access statistics I prefer to rely on absolute data rather than relative remote controlled data. Hence my own day to day detailed access log statistics are made with an optimized / modified version of webalizer. More alter on that topic.

Monitor resolution also needs to be known when creating graphics such as the Blog banner on top of THIS page, when creating framesets or when calculating CSS with floating objects ( div ) left, middle or right. Also to optimize your Google AdSense properly, you need to know the typical visitors screen size / resolution / proportion.

The above graphical display of screen resolutions shows you both - resolution and ratio. ratio of monitor width to height is obtained by dividing the left number with the right number in the resolution colon left.

Screen proportion

Screen proportion refers to the ratio width to height. Among the industries modern desktop we find 3 prevailing screen ratios: 4:3 - the traditional desktop monitor, 16:10 - the traditional widescreen monitor and the more modern video oriented 1080p/HDTV monitor with a ratio of 16:9.

Examples:

Nr 6 = 1680x1050px resolution. 1680:1050=16:10 - thus a typical traditional widescreen monitor or Nr 1 = 1024x768px. 1024:768=4:3 - thus the traditional (old fashioned) desktop still prevails currently.

Depending on the type of site you have - you may also enjoy an increased and growing number of mobile site visitors with various mobile devices such as Nokia, Blackberry and other mobile www capable cellphones, hand-helds, palmtops or netbooks.

Screen colors

Most modern screens including mobiles have sufficient colors to properly display pictures and graphics. Hence as a publisher you offer best color quality and the surfers get whatever their device offers. There was an ancient www time where computers had much lower color capabilities and it made little sense to offer full true color mode as a publisher. Below screen color statistic however shows that all modern devices allow an excellent color rendering of your graphics and pictures.

Connection speed

While many among us enjoy high speed connections - below stats show the largest group as unknown connection speed. That means that largest group of surfers can be anything from ultra slow to satellite ( = expensive, complex but by no means automatically fast ) or mobile access technologies.

Hence if your content is of true / real humanitarian value to all mankind. Like spiritual content, medical content, daily life howtos, etc - then you better keep your file-/page sizes clean and short to allow even the slowest or most expensive kb charged connections efficient viewing of your pages.

Flash version support

Fancy sites use Flash and / or Java. Serious professional sites rarely or never use fancy technologies to display important content. Hence if you have anything of true value to show or publish, then use simple technologies that require NO plugins. Technologies that use fastest page loading, smallest file size and thus most time/cost efficient publishing/viewing methods.

For my own surfing habits: I strictly leave ANY site that uses flash or java in major pages or even on domain start page. While flash presentations may be fancy looking, most of the time the tiny content presented in a flash file also could be published with a few words or sentences that could be instantly read and used for decision making.

Flash may be justified for tutorials or technical howtos to show how to do things. Flash never should be used as a presentation of a company or introdution to a site, hotel resort, etc. Time is precious - to all readers. Wasting readers time with useless and lengthy presentations may be modern AMWAY - but never truly professional.

Finally it is your choice. My advice: Keep all short and simple. Never require your first time visitors to sign up, to register, to install new plugins. A web site should have ALL content available in traditional technology. Hence using jpg, png, gif and written content.

Java version support

Final advice for publishers

Focus on content, create your own unique content. Create the highest affordable quality content no matter the efforts needed. Either you can afford quality - or you should change your job and do something affordable! A world without quality is unworthy to be maintained. The quality of your work reflects the quality of your love toward others. If your work consists of content written or created by others - published on your site, that means you have no true love of your own for this world. That also would mean that this world might be better world without you than with you .... To be of any value TO THIS world and thus to creation, you need to have a sincere desire to work, to create, to be unique, to invent true value to ease other people's life. Such is the true nature of a human being as created by God. Anything else is an expression of ego created by mankind.

Be inspired BY others - but NEVER copy others.

Love and bliss

hans