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1366×768px overtakes 1024×768px as the most popular screen resolution worldwide
- bond 15y agoLaptops taking over desktop PCs...
- jaysonelliot 15y agoWhat about tablets? How does the iPad's 2048 x 1536 resolution work out in the real world? I assume web sites don't appear in a 1:1 pixel ratio, or a 960 pixel wide site would appear tiny in the browser. I use the 960 grid from http://960.gs/ http://960.gs/ when I build a site, and I find that sites on my 1680 x 1050 monitor look great at 960 pixels wide. I would assume that sticking with a 960 pixel wide grid is still optimal, but I'd love to hear people's points of view.
- jonknee 15y agoIt still identifies as 1024x768 and will look just like it does on the previous iPads (albeit with sharper text). It's just like how the iPhone works the same regardless of retina.
- jbverschoor 15y agoSo does that mean that everybody's on a 13" macbook?
- dchest 15y ago13" MacBooks are 1280×800.
- johnpmayer 15y agoAs it turns out, I get that res on my 11"
- FootballMuse 15y agoThe 11" MBA is 1366 x 768, but the 13" MBA is 1440 x 900. The 15" MBP has been 1440 x 900 since 2006 but in 2010 added an upgrade option to 1680 x 1050. As far as I know, the 11" MBA is the only Mac to ever offer that resolution.
- fierarul 15y agoI'm not surprised. Only the "high end" laptops have a resolution that's not 1366x768 in Romania. I used to have a 14" Dell with a 1600×1200 resolution back in 2008. But in 2012 you really have to pay extra for something like that. 15.6 inch and 1366x768 is just incredible considering the 4 inch iPhone is 960x640 nowadays.
- beedogs 15y agoOne of the senior managers at a place I worked in 2001 had a 15" 1600x1200 Dell (Inspiron 8000). Now it's nearly, if not completely impossible to find that many pixels in a comparable form factor.
- jl6 15y agoGlad to see the i8k mentioned. I have one, its screen is indeed an incredible thing, and it's still working in tip top condition today. I find tech kit either breaks within weeks or lasts forever.
- acqq 15y agoI still use a notebook from 2002 with 1400x1050 with an IPS screen. Ten years since, I can't find any notebook with an IPS and 4:3 (only tablets, thanks to Apple) and I'd really pay for both features on the notebook with an i5 or an i7 CPU. I hoped increased demand after iPad's success would make IPS and 4:3 reappear on notebooks .
- seanp2k2 15y ago14" 1920x1200 here....laptop is from like 2008 (c2d Dell Latitude D830.) I won't upgrade because the "upgrade" has 1920x1080, and being a Sysadmin, vertical pixels lost means less lines in my term and more scrolling. It's a shame that we moved from 16x10 to 16x9 to save a few bucks. Last I checked, Apple and levovo (w-series) still offer 1920x1200, but my laptop cos $280 used, and the lenovo or MBP would be close to 3 grand. Sad.
- 15y ago
- tjoff 15y ago1024x768 is still the best window-size for browsing (and most other tasks as well) in my opinion. Don't get any silly ideas of designing a web page for wider than 1024 pixels (the only thing I miss out today is in the "worst" case ads).
- Alex3917 15y ago"Don't get any silly ideas of designing a web page for wider than 1024 pixels" Do you think there's anything wrong with fitting the essential information within 1024 pixels, but then putting non-essential stuff to the right of that?
- tjoff 15y agoI'm a bit skeptical, I'd probably see that there is something to the right and would have to scroll just to see whether it was non-essential or not. If its a site I regularly visit that is not a problem though, but what is non-essential to you might be essential to me so I'd be happy if there were small duplicate links in the footer or something. I guess it depends, but in general anything besides ads further than 1024 pixels to the right annoys me.
- OzzyB 15y agoI agree with tjoff; just because a majority of users' screensizes are increasing, doesn't mean we have to keep "upping" the size of our webpages accordingly. I don't think the guy that just bought a brand-sparkling new 27" cinema display really wants all the websites he visits to now start filling his entire screen -- he bought it to do multiple things at once. Speaking from experience, I keep all my browsers at around a 1024px viewport and I get frustrated when I visit a site and need to scroll horizontally. I think the best target size for webpages is still 1024px with 960px^ as its main content area size. The 960px grid is still very strong and useful and there's nothing wrong with it -- I would even go as far as to say that it's a "standard". (http://960.gs http://960.gs). To me 1024/960 page size is the web's A4/Legal. ^Doesn't have to be 960px obviously...
- Raphael 15y ago
- coryl 15y agoWhat's the most popular monitor size nowadays? 20"?
- klausa 15y agoI'd guess 15" laptop.
- rdl 15y agoI would assume 13-15" (laptop).
- sycren 15y agowell the 13 inch macbook pro is the most popular apple laptop and netbooks/ultrabooks seem more popular than 17 inch behemoths so I guess somewhere around 13 inches is right
- ptm 15y agoI run a site that requires users to report their monitor size in inches (pective.com). 15"/17" are the most popular. http://blog.pective.com/post/361455212/the-distribution-of-self-reported-monitor-sizes-of http://blog.pective.com/post/361455212/the-distribution-of-s...
- joblessjunkie 15y ago"...(*excluding mobile)" Why exclude mobile?
- lini 15y agoIt all depends on the target market - for example if you are making a site for gamers, you should look at the Steam HW survey, where 1920x1080 is used by 25% of people. 1366x768 is a distant second with 15%. Source: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- slewis 15y agoIts true you should consider who your users are. But these numbers shouldn't be used to determine what size to make a website. I'd guess most people with 1920x1080 monitors don't maximize their browser.
- Seth_Kriticos 15y agoI would not be so sure at that. I see plenty of people doing that. It's mostly habit, I think. Even somewhat technically versed people do that (many of them who have been working with computers for more than 15 years).
- thangalin 15y agoFor general websites, I preview the site using: http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ Many web sites are not designed for people who retain older technology for financial (or other) reasons. Every web developer should befriend someone over the age of 60 and watch their surfing habits.
- justinph 15y agoWhile this site is sort of useful for looking at screen size, it gives the false impression that users don't scroll. They do. Don't ever show this to anyone that isn't fully aware of this, else you'll fall into the trap of trying to put everything "above the fold", a terrible prison to escape.
- briandear 15y agoAbove the fold design is critical from a marketing standpoint. But you're right, everything doesn't have to be above the fold.. if anything the above the fold should be designed to encourage readers to scroll below the fold.
- seanp2k2 15y agoSad that our pixel density hasn't gone up since the 90s, really. Tv ruins people with 42" screens at only 1080p. I'm glad to see that Apple is showing people that pixel density matters more than resolution alone, and I await their high-density MacBook displays. Hopefully they'll be out this fall, but a quick survey of the 4K-rezo landscape suggests that they'll likely have to wait another year for prices to drop :/
- liquidsnake 15y agoPixel density isn't the real problem, it's the lack of content. Even though there have been Full HD displays for quite some time most of the HD content is only 720p, especially games on current generation consoles.
- martincmartin 15y agoTV ruins people with 42" screens at only 1080p. Actually, that pixel density is typically too high because they sit so far back. From http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/08/high-definition-television http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/08/high-definiti... "A survey made some years ago by Bernard Lechner, a television engineer at the former RCA Laboratories, near Princeton, New Jersey, showed that the median eye-to-screen distance in American homes was nine feet. At that distance, a 1080p HDTV set (with a screen 1,920 pixels wide and 1,080 pixels high) needs to be at least 69-inch across a diagonal if viewers are to see all the detail it offers." When I play games on my XBox, I need to pull up a chair so I can sit about 5-6 feet from my TV. My couch is about 10' from the TV, and I simply can't make out the detail as well from that distance.
- evincarofautumn 15y agoThanks for this; I was going to bring it up if no one else did. Yes, the average human eye is sharp—acuity of just under a hundredth of a degree—but not sharp enough to need that resolution at such distance.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- pogosian 15y agoBy the way, I'm using 11 inch mba as my main dev machine and here's how to take advantage of 16x9 displays if you're using emacs: - you can split your emacs frame into multiple columns with C-x 3 (and balance them with C-x +), this way you can see two or even three files side by side. - you can use emacs follow-mode which creates one virtual window split into multiple buffers, which is very useful for 768px high displays.
- jseliger 15y agoThat's funny—I was recently trying to see if any non-emacs text editors have follow-mode or something like it. Textmate, Sublime, and a few others don't. Really aggravating for someone like me, who finds emacs overkill and as intuitive as launching a spaceshuttle. EDIT: Oh, and I'm using a 27" iMac, so I have lots of screen real estate.
- andrewfelix 15y agoI'm not sure that the data provided by StatCounter is representative of global trends. They're stat counters are installed on 3 million sites which sounds like a lot. But if you take a look at the distribution of those sites globally they're not evenly spread. You can take a look at their sample size per country here: http://gs.statcounter.com/sample-size/StatCounterGlobalStatsJan12_SampleSizeCountryBreakdown.csv http://gs.statcounter.com/sample-size/StatCounterGlobalStats...
- jacobr 15y agoscreen resolution is a useless number for web developers, browser viewport dimensions are what matters.
- skatenerd 15y agoanyone notice the particularly narrow content pane?
- mathiasben 15y agothe marketing wizards dictating design feel consumers want screens with a letterbox presentation, if it's square it's preceived as old, low-def and undesirable.
- Duff 15y agoIt's amazing how segmented the market has become. A few years ago, everyone pretty much had 1024x768 or 1280x1024. Now, just about all cheap laptops are 1366x768. Everything else is all over the map!
- haxdit 15y agoAnother noob article on Hacker News. Dismissing mobile screens in this count? How ignorant! Calling it responsive design? Do your job and show the website on any device. You noobs are embarrassing. PHP blows, which is probably why you suck so bad.
- kelvin0 15y agoWow, I will never be the same person again...Earth shattering
- donohoe 15y agoWonderful. But its really the window that matters, right?
- RandallBrown 15y agoDo these numbers include the iPad? It seems silly to call the iPad a mobile browser. A website for a phone screen scaled up to the iPad usually looks ridiculous.
- blahedo 15y agoI am going to be so angry if[0] this makes web devs start designing for grids that have to be 1300px wide to work. I don't fullscreen anything (too wide for the height, and too wide for the font size!), and while the majority of webpages look just fine in a ~600px wide browser window, possibly after right-scrolling to put the content column in the window, rarely does a day go by that I don't have to tear off a tab and widen it---not to make it look good, but to make it usable at all. Like that crappy Bump page posted here earlier today: if you view it in a narrow window, even if you right-scroll the window the content is sliced at window-width, with the page absolutely unusable at anything less than my full screen width. I don't know if there's anyone out there still on an 800x600 resolution, but there's a significant portion of the web that they actually can't use in any way. It doesn't have to be that way! [0]Realistically, I know it's "when", but I'll stick with the denial a little longer.
- paul9290 15y agoResponsive design is what all us designers and front end coders should be focused on learning and using. Check out the Starbucks website and manipulate the window size. It automatically changes stylesheets based on window size.
- blahedo 15y agoI love it! The Boston Globe website (boston.com) had at one point demoed a similarly responsive front page, but they seem to have switched back to their old annoying format.
- DavidAbrams 15y agoWTF? How did this bizarre resolution even become an accepted "standard"? It emerged with plasma TVs of five years ago or so, and was baffling then. After that, it started showing up on netbooks. Now it's the most common?
- julianpid 15y agoI felt like sharing this info here because it matters to me more than pixel density or aspect ratio. It turns out that GPUs like the popular Intel integrated gfx chips requires each lines of your framebuffer to be 64 bytes aligned. And yet, when using a 1366 wide resolution in 32bit per pixel mode, the visible length in bytes of a framebuffer is 5464, which is not a multiple of 64. The operating system circumvent the problem by allocating 5504 bytes for each line of the framebuffer instead of 5464. It represent a loss of 30KB of unused memory. Anyway, you're probably think I'm mad to care about those things instead of pixel density or aspect ratio, and 30KB is definitely meaningless compared to the memory footprint of a complete framebuffer (which is around 4-5MB). But you know these people who can't stand having the volume bar set to an odd number on their television set ? I'm exactly like them, why in hell would you not use an horizontal resolution which is not a multiple of 64 ?
- SamReidHughes 15y ago> But you know these people who can't stand having the volume bar set to an odd number on their television set ? Um, no?
- zem 15y agoi miss 1400x900 :( it was a lot nicer to use in a laptop than 1366x768
- kristianp 15y agoFrom the stats page CSV: 19.28% 1366x768 18.6% 1024x768 12.95% 1280x800 7.49% Other 7.48% 1280x1024 6.6% 1440x900 5.09% 1920x1080 3.83% 1600x900 3.63% 1680x1050 + others from the csv file below 3% That resolution is going to dominate for a while, until retina -style screens make an influence on the mass market. I recently moved from 1280x800 to 1440x900 myself.