Best screen size for web site.

[Eric4]

I moved up about a year ago from 800x600 to 1024x768 as the minimum acceptable page width. According to Google Analytics, about 3.5% of our visitors still use 800x600 screen resolution.

Regards,
Eric4

[Matt]

Agreed. 800x600 is dead. If it's not, lets kill it. You do not need the clients that run those old systems. They obviously do not have the money to spend on upgrades, so how are they going to afford your products?

Next take into account they probably sign on to the Internet very rarely, have lots of technical problems and support issues, further tying up your resources. Maybe a niche market for someone, but not for economies of scale.

Ruthless? Not really. Simple economics.

[Eric4]

You do not need the clients that run those old systems.

That's a bit harsh, we appreciate all of our clients, even ones who enjoy seeing a bottom scroll bar.

Cheers,
Eric4

[charlesh]

It's kinda like trying to code to still put in fixes for ie 5.5. Is it worth it to do so?

[Matt]

Originally Posted by charlesh

It's kinda like trying to code to still put in fixes for ie 5.5. Is it worth it to do so?

Depends on your site I guess. Its sort of a catch 22. If you make it compatible for IE5.5....your stats are going to show more users of IE 5.5 are using the site, which artificially iflates the importance of this browser.

On this site, IE5.5 is not considered as "important" even though 7% of our traffic comes from users of that browser, I think its mainly because we got lucky in coding and this site happens to work well in IE 5.5

When developing things I like to use Yahoo's definition of A-Grade browsers.

Yahoo! UI Library: Graded Browser Support

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Eric4

That's a bit harsh, we appreciate all of our clients, even ones who enjoy seeing a bottom scroll bar.

Cheers,
Eric4

Yes I appreciate them too but I am not going to spend time marketing to them and I will already have an experience-based bias that these types of users are probably unable (for monetary reasons) or unwilling (due to laziness or intellect) to learn how to keep up with technology and probably do not excel at things like efficient usage of a computer.

In other words, they are less likely to be power-users or even competent-users thus tying up support times on the most basic of issues, half of which are probably unrelated to web hosting. They will probably cost us more to support than other clients and they will be less willing to pay what they need to pay, to get the job done properly.

This can be problematic when dealing in an Internet service business which by nature is always bleeding edge.

Picking and choosing your clients and sticking in a niche is a far superior way to conduct business than trying to please everyone. My humblest opinion of course.

I'd rather run a shop on Rodeo drive than run a Wal-Mart any day.