As a courtesy to those that run lessor resolutions that me, I tend to post images at 640x480 (or thereabouts).

I am now re-thinking that.

I pulled the web stats from our server farm at work for the last 1M visitors regarding the screen resolution in use on the computer that the browsers where running on.

800x600 - 7,000
1024x768 - 322,000
1280x1024 - 521,000 (this surprised me)
1280+ - 150,000

Interestingly over 50% of the users are using a 'lame duck' resolution, the 1280x1024 is considered to be an over-square and not terribly useful resolution in this new wide-screen world.

Only 1/8th of the visitors are running in a wide-screen resolution !

Interestingly when I pulled the stats across my sites I saw a very similar pattern except it was even more skewed towards 1280x1024.

So, given that I am not seeing any traffic at all for 800x600 users - or worse - I have adjusted my gallery to make that 8x6 the lowest resolution available.

Goodbye 640x480, it was (not) nice knowing you......

 

Max, is this something that should be posted in Site Feedback? If you wish to move it over, let me know. I'll be happy to move it for you.

BTW, on my laptop, the larger resolution pix are not easy to see all at once on my screen. I still like the smaller images.

 

When I maintained our club site there was one person saying a lot of users use 640x480. So I adjusted the site for that resolution to work. After a few months I looked at the statistics and no one visited when using that resolution. Needless to say it was gone quickly.

One reason you may see so many visitors with 1280x1024 is because most 17" LCD monitors don't go beyond that. Judging by friends and family that just use computers for email and internet I would say 17" LCD's are the most common monitor.

 

If anyone is using their analog (or analogue in your vernacular) television as their main computer display, there my be a reason to keep 640X480. That being said, how likely is that??????

 

Clo - maybe site feedback is the place yes.....

 

Okay! I'll move it from Off Topic to Site Feedback for you. You'll get more response there, I'm sure.

 

Yep - that's exactly what I was going to post after I read post #1.

LCD monitors have quickly become the norm, and yes 17" is the most common... but it's worth noting that 18" and 19" LCD monitors also tend to have a maximum/native resolution of 1280x1024. It's typically not until 20" LCDs or higher that you jump to 1600x1200 (or 1920x1200 in the case of widescreen).

640x480 is effectively extinct... except when your video drivers are acting up.

 

Just for fun, I temporarily set my laptop's screen to 640x480 (native resolution is 1440x900).

Wow - I'd forgotten just how crappy things looked at that resolution. At ~50dpi, there's no amount of anti-aliasing in the world that will get rid of the "jaggies" on icons and text, even on a screen that's only 15" diagonal.

 

1280x1024 is, by far, what I see around me in everyday usage. At this point in history, it hits the sweet spot of being CHEAP and easily compatible with older hardware, yet high enough resolution for good productivity.

The biggest appeal for wide-screen is for playing wide screen movies. But in business, it is just as important to read up and down a document (in my case, software source code) as to read across. For most business environments, when upgrading to the next screen resolution it would be more useful to go to 1600x1200 rather than a wide screen format.

 

My desktop computer at home has a 20" widescreen LCD (1600x1200) that you can rotate to portrait mode, and it automatically rotates the image at the same time.
At first, I thought it was just a gimmick, or that it would only be useful for graphic design-type applications, but it's also *great* for anything that takes up many vertical screens (like source code, weblogs, web forums like NAM or Slashdot, eBay listings, etcetera).

Whenever I'm viewing content that's more portrait-friendly, I reach up and give the monitor a flip to reposition it. When I'm done, I just flip it back.

 

I think the terminology of "widescreen" usually refers not to size or resolution but to the 16:9 cinema aspect ratio, and I think that is also what the OP was referring to. I think of 1600x1200 as being more like a higher resolution extension of 1280x1024 without being widescreen.

 

You're right - I just did the math, and the aspect ratio on my 20" is the same as my old 15" CRT monitor that ran 1024*768. (4:3)

It's funny, though - the 20" sure *looks* a lot more "rectangular" than I remember my old CRT monitors being.

As for 16:9, are there even any LCD computer monitors/laptop screens using that aspect ratio natively?

 

I have no room on my desktop for a 16:9 aspect ratio monitor without using something horribly small.

I'll replace my professional series CRT's when they die or when something else comes along that offers the flexibilty and color accuracy of them. I run all manner of resolutions, which looks like crap on LCD monitors. LCD's only look thier best when they run at native resolutions.

I cannot run a Windows desktop at high resolutions. It makes it too hard to read anything (ole eyes aint what they used to be). Games are another story. I run my desktop on my 19 inch monitor at 1024x768. I play most game at 1280x1024.

The downside to big imgaes, besides having to pan it around the screen to see it, is the amount of time it takes to download them. I get impatient rather easily as it pertains to the Internet.

On a bulletin board I usually just skip threads which have large images in them due to the time it takes to open the threads.

A couple of the young guys at work use 1600x1200 for thier desktop resolution on 21" LCD monitors and I cannot read anything on them without getting 2 inches from the screen. It amazes me they can work at all.

 

Currently running 1680x1050.....I must be the odd one out there.

 

Actually, the "widescreen" ratio on computers is 16:10, not 16:9. Examples are 1280x800, 1440x900, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. I understand how you feel about that. LCDs are fantastic... the best, sharpest picture... but only at their native resolutions, due to the fixed grid nature of LCD design. As soon as you lower the resolution below it, it has to "stretch" the image to fill the screen, or show it in a smaller physical size (with a black border around it). Neither solution is ideal, because stretching is always an "estimation" (as the pixels in the fixed grid don't line up exactly where they need to), and of course the black bar method will give you a sharp image, but much smaller than the screen!

It's for this reason I have two setups at home - a pair of 21" LCDs on one system (each running 1600x1200 natively), and a single widescreen 24" CRT on another, which of course can handle any resolution you throw at it (although I usually run 1920x1200 on it).

Even though they are bulky, I too can appreciate CRT technology and the benefits it has over LCD!...it helps to have 20/20 vision. As I type this, I'm on my work laptop, which has a 15.5" widescreen LCD... running at 1920x1200 resolution. I love it.

However, when helping someone else with their new LCD setup, and they complain about the small size, I've found it's much better to keep the high resolution for sharpness... and compensate in other ways, like increasing the font & icon sizes.Nah, not so odd for people who've switched over to widescreens!

 

Same problem here with my old eyes. What works great though is a second monitor (if you have a second display adapter or one that supports two monitors). Expanded screen real estate without having to squint. When I take my laptop to work, I plug in an extra monitor and get 1280x1024 in addition to my laptop's 1400x1050.

 

1900x1200 here. I <3 my 23" Cinema Display.

They've been phasing in new laptops at work as the older ones' leases are running out. I don't know what their native resolution is, but I don't know how people manage to read the screen without serious eyestrain, the fonts and such are so small...

 

I do not have room on my desk for two monitors. So I am stuck with a CRT, until some technology comes along that offers the flexibility of the CRT.

Also, color accuracy is important for my job. The bext LCD displays we could find approach about 82% accuracy for color reproduction while the CRT's will get around 98%. That is with both being professionally calibrated.

We went through several LCD displays. The first one we got could do not better than 65% accuracy. Finally settled on a really expensive NEC display. We just use my CRT monitor (an FP series NEC) for the final color pass.

Odd thing about current LCD's is the accuracy of the color reproduction, across the spectrum, looks like a sawtooth pattern. Some colors are very accurate, while others are horribly wrong.

A good CRT with rare Earth phosphors has a pretty flat line for color reproduction accuracy across the spectrum.

 

Interesting !

So, I also pulled the stats on the average time to serve a 'known size' file - this gives me an approximation of the bandwidth and hence the broadband user vs the 56K user - this is partly in response to the time to load an image intensive thread issue.

Again - if I take the last 1M unique visitors.

Modem speeds - 11,000
~3Mb Broadband - 729,000
> 3Mb broadband - 249,00
> 10Mb - 1,000

So I started to look at the time for small (640) vs larger (800) images

I compress my images as far as I can using .jpg compression

640x427pxl average image - 57KB

800x534px average image - 66KB

Looking in my big book of web design and image publishing it says to stay below 75KB - in both sizes I am hitting the mark.

By going from 640 to 800 I am increasing the load time on a 56K modem by about 1/3th of a second - if I post 100 images - it will take an extra 35 seconds to load. On broadband it hardly matters.

I absolutely take on board the issues with LCD vs CRT displays - I too have a color matched CRT for 'final balance', but I do 99% of photo editing on a 20" LCD, running at 1680x1050......

I feel that it is time to kill 640xnnn images, the new standard of 800xnnn is supported by the vast majority of users around the world now, the screen resolution is there and the 56 warnings are way less appropriate than ever......

 

I would say choose image sizes appropriate for the content. When I post pictures, I usually choose sizes no larger than necessary to get the point across, because it is usually easier to read a thread when pictures are smaller size. Here is an example. I am not giving consideration to bandwidth at all, just how to communicate most effectively. Imagine a newspaper where every picture is large size. Just because pictures can be larger doesn't mean it would be better.