800 x 600 vs 1024 x 768

[newshopbloke]

Hi all,

Im ready to upload again and I really like the 'smart' theme but am not happy about horizontal scrolling for 800 x 600 screens. Web designers have always told me "never forget those at a lower res, you could lose business", is it time to stop ignoring this issue and just hope its only a very small perecntage who cant view it easily ?

Cheers

Mick

[pinbrook]

according to stats that i look at you should really design for both res.

about 60% of viewers use 1024 and about 30% are 800. The rest are other res or unknown.

So there's alot of people out there that you are alienating

[magicalwonders]

Hello Mick,

If the stats I found at the following site are reliable, it's not such a small percentage still viewing at 800 x 600. (29%)

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

I don't know if a horizontal scroll would cause you to lose business, but it is annoying for the user to have to scroll up and down and sideways.

Definitely something to think about. Is there no way to edit the smart theme to prevent it?

Myles

[pinbrook]

Those stats are fascinating.....look how Firefox has taken off...

[jont]

I don't know if a horizontal scroll would cause you to lose business, but it is annoying for the user to have to scroll up and down and sideways.

I guess it also depends on your target audience and the products involved. It would be interesting to see stats on the numbers of people leaving sites due to horizontal scrolling (or other design faux pas) - I would hazard a guess that the majority will be very net savvy / heavy users with light users tolerating such problems as they don't know any better - but that is still no excuse to exclude / annoy anyone due to bad design.

Designing for larger screens was fine but now look at how everything is getting smaller with PDA access, mobile phones etc. Maybe in 2 years time even 800 x 600 is to large for the majority of viewers out there!

[newshopbloke]

Thanks for the replies, informative forum as ever

29% is way more than I expected !. When I used 800 x 600 I used to leave a website immediately I saw a horizontal scrollbar, especially if more tham a 3rd of the info was off the screen.

Is actinic firefox friendly ?

The problem is browsing is just browsing, I wonder what the stats would be for a 'browse and buy' survey ? A web designer once said to me "people who are serious about buying online usually have up to date systems" but I cant agree with that because it cuts out so many people especially those with smaller / older laptops.

I really do like the smart theme but mat have to think again.

Mick

[newshopbloke]

Designing for larger screens was fine but now look at how everything is getting smaller with PDA access, mobile phones etc. Maybe in 2 years time even 800 x 600 is to large for the majority of viewers out there!

Very good point, will we see an 'actinic mobile plug in' I wonder..........

Mick

[garyhay]

The Smart Theme does work at 800 x 600

Just change the DESIGN > OPTIONS > SITE DEFAULTS ACTSWIDTH to 100%

You may have to set ADVANCED > CUSTOM PROPERTIES > ACTSWIDTH to text rather than integer.


Don't know why people wanted it changed?

[EaglesNest]

The Smart Theme does work at 800 x 600

Just change the DESIGN > OPTIONS > SITE DEFAULTS ACTSWIDTH to 100%

You may have to set ADVANCED > CUSTOM PROPERTIES > ACTSWIDTH to text rather than integer.


Don't know why people wanted it changed?

Gary,

Is the same true for the Best Seller Theme. I have been tearing my hair out trying to get that one to display correctly on my clients PC and he is set at 1024 x 768, sometimes! and 800 x 600 other time. Don't ask...

[jxm28788]

I'm guessing those are general surfing stats, but they don't bear much resemblence to the stats from my sites.

Could be, as newshopbloke said, that 'shoppers' use different specs to casual surfers, or more likely my data is skewed to UK users.

Anyway here the stats from my site -

MS Internet Explorer - 94.2 %
FireFox No - 2.5 %
Safari No - 1.1 %
Unknown - 0.7 %
Mozilla No - 0.6 %
Netscape - 0.3 %
Opera No - 0.2 %
Konqueror - 0.1 %
LibWWW - 7 0 %

1024x768 - 60.5%
800x600 - 25.8%
1280x1024 - 7.5%
1152x864 - 2.4%
1400x1050 - 0.9%
1280x800 - 0.9%
1280x960 - 0.6%
1600x1200 - 0.5%
1440x900 - 0.5%
640x480 - 0.4%

So the screen res is similar but IE is still dominant for my UK customers.

[garyhay]

Is the same true for the Best Seller Theme. I have been tearing my hair out trying to get that one to display correctly on my clients PC and he is set at 1024 x 768, sometimes! and 800 x 600 other time. Don't ask...

Yes

It should also work at all screen sizes from 800 x 600 upwards

[newshopbloke]

Thanks for that excellent tip Gary, didnt realise it would be so simple and was having visions of custom cells, borders and tables etc. Unfortunately its not working when I hit the 'shop' pages and only on the home, welcome, about pages etc.

I have removed all the standard actinic example images like office chairs etc to make sure they were not forcing a larger size and also cleared out my IE cache and used ctrl / refresh for a force refresh.

I thought 'site defaults' would apply to the whole site ?

Any further help much appreciated,

Regards

Mick

[garyhay]

You might need to setup the brouchure pages by editing the template

[newshopbloke]

Thanks Gary,

I think thats where I will stop and revert back to the original actinic defaults. The last time I started editing templates, code and pages I got myself in a terrible mess And if you ever have to reload the Actinic software it puts everything back and you have to do it all over again, been there - done that - got the tee shirt !

Think I will just have to stick with it and hope the horizontal scrollers dont mind too much. What I will do is have a "website not viewing correctly ?" message and they can tell me all about it if they wish.

Regards,

Mick

[jont]

Hi Mick - save the template as a new name eg: Act_Primary_ORIGINAL before you start the changes and if it all goes pear-shaped simply rename the ORIGINAL template back again - thereby alleviating the re-installing routine to get you back to where you were.