21/08: Monitor Depth Explained
I was working on a customer’s site the other day and we have a discussion about which Monitor Depth their new site should be designed for. This is an extremely normal discussion with new clients. They need to know which monitor depth people are using on their computers and what we should be designing for. I put this article together to give a brief explanation of what monitor depth and monitor trends mean to your company.
First off you need to understand one important rule, even though you might have a 20" monitor and your neighbor has a 15" monitor you will both see websites the exact same way if your monitor depth is the same. The person with the 20" monitor won’t see any more "desktop area" than the person with the 15" monitor if their monitor depths are the same. In other words if you both are set to an 800 x 600 "monitor depth" you are both only going to see 800pixels wide and 600pixels high of information no matter the size of your monitor, it will just look bigger on the larger monitor. For example you will be able to get the same amount of icons on the screen, but the person with the larger monitor will have larger icons.
If you want to see what your monitor depth is go to your control panel then open "Display" and click on the "settings" tab. You will then see what your monitor depth is set to right now. These settings are surprisingly universal.
About 5 years ago, most of the population had their computers set to 800 x 600 and that is what web designers built sites for. We built sites that were less than 800px wide so that the majority of the people on the internet could see their website the best, usually somewhere around 750px wide. Recently there has been a major change in monitor depths. With the cost of Flat Screen Monitors coming down in price more and more people are buying them. Now you might think to yourself, well, they could still set their monitors to 800 x 600, but this is a flawed logic. Flat Screen monitor at such a low depth look very blurry and horrible because they were not built for that. If you have a flat screen you would have noticed that your monitor has a depth which is optimal where everything doesn't look blurry. Thankfully that depth is larger than 800 x 600 and more and more people are starting to make the transition. I saw thankfully because 800 x 600 is a horrible depth which really doesn't give end users a lot of monitor real estate to do what they love to do the most - view videos. Most videos are set to 640 x 480 and if you have paid attention you now realize that is most of your screen area on an 800 x 600 monitor.
In 2004 and 2005 a great transition started to happen with people purchasing flat screen monitors - the monitor depths went up. During this time most people had made the transition to 1024 x 768. This is not a huge jump but it was enough of a bump that web designers had to take notice. During that time over 50% of people were using a 1024 x 768 monitor depth. The problem was that some designers still decided to design for 800 x 600 (ourselves included) because you could also potentially miss a good portion of your audience that were still using 800 x 600 which made up about 25 - 30% of users.
Jump forward to the present. Every computer that Dell puts out comes with a Flat Screen LCD, All Macs are Flat Screen and nowadays they are too cheap to pass up anymore. Honestly I see flat screens cheaper than the CRT (the big box monitors) all of the time. More and more people have made the transition and web designers have made the change to designing web sites about 1000px wide.
You can see this change happening everywhere - Here are a few sites that are 1000px wide:
The New York Times
New York Magazine
MSN News
CNN News
Forbes
These are only a few, but honestly they are some of the biggest websites and companies in the world. There is one other change I also wanted to address, obviously if you have looked at your monitor depth you will have realized that your monitor is set even higher than 1024 x 768 and this is extremely common with the addition of wide screen and flat screen monitors. Most flat screens have a much higher optimal monitor depth than 1024 x 768. The smallest depth for wide screen monitors is 1280 x 768 which is 1280px wide to compensate for the monitor being wider than an average monitor. Then there are people who just like everything to be the best they can get their settings to be and will raise their monitor depth as high as it will go, like myself. Being a web designer I need as much space on my monitor I can get, so I can work with 5-6 programs at a time. The monitor I use at work is a 24" Dell Wide Screen and I have it set to 1920 x 1200. And I have 2 monitors because I need even more space than that will hold. This is not bragging, this is a point, some companies have started to take notice of this as well and are building their websites to compensate. They are building websites which span an entire screen, so no matter what your monitor depth the site will still provide all the information you want on your screen. Honestly these are not the best looking websites, but they are very functional and provide as much information on the screen as possible. They are called "Spanning Websites" because they span to take up as much of your monitor depth as you have. Many information & Blog websites do this to provide easy access information on the entire screen.
A few sites that span their websites:
Wikipedia
Drudge Report
The problem with this is that you don't have much control over how your website will look since the end user can manipulate the size of the page and really distort your site to their needs. Because of this many informative websites still design with 1000px wide in mind so they have more control over the look of their website without the end user being able to "break" their page. Sites like YouTube and HowStuffWorks both provide a lot of information without doing a full span site so they can control their site.
So really when it all comes down to it, the audience of your site will define what your site should be designed for, but in all honestly very few sites need to be spanning sites and you should tell your web designer to build your site to the 1000px wide dimensions since now only 10 - 15% of people are still using 800 x 600 monitor depth. People buy High Speed Internet connections and larger monitors to get the most out of their computer and web experience that they can, and they are spending more and more money to do it. So, lets give it to them!
The monitor depth information I found for this article is located at:
WC3Schools - Monitor Depth
tags: monitor, depth,, designing,, web, design,, 800, x, 600,, 1024, x, 768,, 1280, x, 1024,, web, trends,, internet, trends,, internet,, websites,, internet, design,, web, layout,, designing,, monitor, size
First off you need to understand one important rule, even though you might have a 20" monitor and your neighbor has a 15" monitor you will both see websites the exact same way if your monitor depth is the same. The person with the 20" monitor won’t see any more "desktop area" than the person with the 15" monitor if their monitor depths are the same. In other words if you both are set to an 800 x 600 "monitor depth" you are both only going to see 800pixels wide and 600pixels high of information no matter the size of your monitor, it will just look bigger on the larger monitor. For example you will be able to get the same amount of icons on the screen, but the person with the larger monitor will have larger icons.
If you want to see what your monitor depth is go to your control panel then open "Display" and click on the "settings" tab. You will then see what your monitor depth is set to right now. These settings are surprisingly universal.
About 5 years ago, most of the population had their computers set to 800 x 600 and that is what web designers built sites for. We built sites that were less than 800px wide so that the majority of the people on the internet could see their website the best, usually somewhere around 750px wide. Recently there has been a major change in monitor depths. With the cost of Flat Screen Monitors coming down in price more and more people are buying them. Now you might think to yourself, well, they could still set their monitors to 800 x 600, but this is a flawed logic. Flat Screen monitor at such a low depth look very blurry and horrible because they were not built for that. If you have a flat screen you would have noticed that your monitor has a depth which is optimal where everything doesn't look blurry. Thankfully that depth is larger than 800 x 600 and more and more people are starting to make the transition. I saw thankfully because 800 x 600 is a horrible depth which really doesn't give end users a lot of monitor real estate to do what they love to do the most - view videos. Most videos are set to 640 x 480 and if you have paid attention you now realize that is most of your screen area on an 800 x 600 monitor.
In 2004 and 2005 a great transition started to happen with people purchasing flat screen monitors - the monitor depths went up. During this time most people had made the transition to 1024 x 768. This is not a huge jump but it was enough of a bump that web designers had to take notice. During that time over 50% of people were using a 1024 x 768 monitor depth. The problem was that some designers still decided to design for 800 x 600 (ourselves included) because you could also potentially miss a good portion of your audience that were still using 800 x 600 which made up about 25 - 30% of users.
Jump forward to the present. Every computer that Dell puts out comes with a Flat Screen LCD, All Macs are Flat Screen and nowadays they are too cheap to pass up anymore. Honestly I see flat screens cheaper than the CRT (the big box monitors) all of the time. More and more people have made the transition and web designers have made the change to designing web sites about 1000px wide.
You can see this change happening everywhere - Here are a few sites that are 1000px wide:
The New York Times
New York Magazine
MSN News
CNN News
Forbes
These are only a few, but honestly they are some of the biggest websites and companies in the world. There is one other change I also wanted to address, obviously if you have looked at your monitor depth you will have realized that your monitor is set even higher than 1024 x 768 and this is extremely common with the addition of wide screen and flat screen monitors. Most flat screens have a much higher optimal monitor depth than 1024 x 768. The smallest depth for wide screen monitors is 1280 x 768 which is 1280px wide to compensate for the monitor being wider than an average monitor. Then there are people who just like everything to be the best they can get their settings to be and will raise their monitor depth as high as it will go, like myself. Being a web designer I need as much space on my monitor I can get, so I can work with 5-6 programs at a time. The monitor I use at work is a 24" Dell Wide Screen and I have it set to 1920 x 1200. And I have 2 monitors because I need even more space than that will hold. This is not bragging, this is a point, some companies have started to take notice of this as well and are building their websites to compensate. They are building websites which span an entire screen, so no matter what your monitor depth the site will still provide all the information you want on your screen. Honestly these are not the best looking websites, but they are very functional and provide as much information on the screen as possible. They are called "Spanning Websites" because they span to take up as much of your monitor depth as you have. Many information & Blog websites do this to provide easy access information on the entire screen.
A few sites that span their websites:
Wikipedia
Drudge Report
The problem with this is that you don't have much control over how your website will look since the end user can manipulate the size of the page and really distort your site to their needs. Because of this many informative websites still design with 1000px wide in mind so they have more control over the look of their website without the end user being able to "break" their page. Sites like YouTube and HowStuffWorks both provide a lot of information without doing a full span site so they can control their site.
So really when it all comes down to it, the audience of your site will define what your site should be designed for, but in all honestly very few sites need to be spanning sites and you should tell your web designer to build your site to the 1000px wide dimensions since now only 10 - 15% of people are still using 800 x 600 monitor depth. People buy High Speed Internet connections and larger monitors to get the most out of their computer and web experience that they can, and they are spending more and more money to do it. So, lets give it to them!
The monitor depth information I found for this article is located at:
WC3Schools - Monitor Depth
tags: monitor, depth,, designing,, web, design,, 800, x, 600,, 1024, x, 768,, 1280, x, 1024,, web, trends,, internet, trends,, internet,, websites,, internet, design,, web, layout,, designing,, monitor, size
