Hey,

Awesome reply Todd. It's tough to argue with research. Thanks for the perspective on big monitor people not having web windows maximized, I've seen this before, it's illuminating to hear about the extent of this practice.

QUESTION:

You note...

"Additionally, looking at the traffic on our sites, only an insignificant
number of users are surfing with resolutions below 800x600, and the vast
majority are surfing with 1024x768 or greater."

But The Counter.com's data shows:

Resolution Stats
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/November/res.php
Fri Nov 1 00:05:01 2002 - Sat Nov 30 23:55:05 2002 30.0 Days

800x600 150120300 (48%)
1024x768 121282316 (39%)
1280x1024 13722590 (4%)
1152x864 9663894 (3%)
640x480 8603330 (2%)
Unknown 3853206 (1%)
1600x1200 2355187 (0%)

So resolutions greater than 800x600 only total 46%, which seems at odds with your statement "the vast majority are surfing with 1024x768 or greater."

Maybe I'm missing something here.

Excellent points made Todd, thanks again to you and all conversating webbies!

Brian Smith
Siena College Webmaster
Loudonville, NY





-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Warfel [mailto:lists@mk27.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 9:28 AM
To: Dreamweaver Talk
Subject: Re: [OT] Liquid vs. fixed


On 12/9/02 4:07 PM, "maxx@interaccess.com" <maxx@interaccess.com> wrote:

> But again, you have no way of knowing for sure what font face or font-size
> viewers will be seeing your site with, since browsers are increasingly
> offering easier ways to override even pixel-based font sizes--so you have no
> way to determine what column width will result in your magic 72-76 characters
> per line. If you have a fixed column width and the user zooms text to 300%,
> they'll see about 20 characters per line. If they zoom to 50%, they
> 'll see 150 characters per line. If your design were liquid, however, the user
> could easily resize the columns to a readable width....

A very good point. But actually, we do have a way to tell -- we've done a
tone of user testing.

Here's what we've found:

What I can tell you is that we've observed thousands of users over the past
couple of years and typically users who have 19-20" monitors rarely surf at
800x600, and rarely surf full with their browser full screen.

It is common for users on Windows who have 17" and smaller monitors to surf
with their browsers full screen. However, users on Windows with 19"+ screens
typically have their resolutions set to 1240x1024 or greater and tend to
surf with their browser windows smaller than the entire screen.

Mac users are more likely to surf with their browser window not maximized
more than Windows users.

Most users don't change the font size in their browsers and do use the
default setting. I'd bet there's a significant number of us here on this
list who have changed the browser's default settings, but then again, we're
not average users -- we're mostly power users of the Web.

Additionally, looking at the traffic on our sites, only an insignificant
number of users are surfing with resolutions below 800x600, and the vast
majority are surfing with 1024x768 or greater.

And furthermore, we can look at the access logs to determine which style
sheet our users are selecting to determine if they prefer a larger font
style, or the default font style.

So, as you can see, we've done quite a bit of testing, across platforms,
browsers, and methods to determine our findings. We're not just testing one
thing, or one method. Our findings our determined via several methods of
testing.

Your mileage may vary, and you can debate it till you're blue in the face,
but that is what our experience and research shows. And you can continue to
argue what if this and what if that. We can ask what ifs till the cows come
in -- that's why we test. And as anyone who's been in this business, or any
other for quite some time, will tell you, if you have doubts, test. Take
your results and move ahead.

I hope that clears things up.

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel

_//message first [method second]
..--.==.--.==.--.==.--.==.--.==.--.==.--.
_//user experience architect
Information architecture
Interaction design
Usability analysis
[P] (607) 339-9640
[E] twarfel@mk27.com
[w] http://www.mk27.com
..--.==.--.==.--.==.--.==.--.==.--.==.--.

In theory, theory and practice are the same,
but in practice, they're not -- anonymous



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