[IxDA Discuss] browser window size stats/studies ?

[Jim Drew / CFM Designs]

From: Håkan Reis <hakan.reis at dotway.se>

>Actually, I did a highly non-scientific study of this. I went through
>20-30 computers at work and checked their screen settings when surfing.I
>turns out the size of most browsers stopped at about 800 x 800. The
>width of 800 seems to be the sweet spot. Larger settings made the lines
>unreadable long (on sites with expandable information).
>
>However, moset of the users are at at least some technichal level.

Yes, that certainly makes sense.  When using the 
browser for reading purposes, a narrower window 
makes sense.  (Unless it's one of the many sites 
that have scads of ads and links and such in both 
the left and right columns (and maybe embedded in 
the content itself), so you need the browser 
wider to make the actual content wide enough to 
get a decent column width.

When using the browser for data entry tasks, 
checking stock portfolios, etc., the wider window 
is apt to be desirable, to fit all the content in 
comfortably.  For myself, I'm not usually doing 
both activities at once, so I change the browser 
setting to match.  (Or in some cases I use a 
different browser completely, or at least a 
second tabbed window, one for pages needing one 
width and one for those needing another.  But 
that's less likely to be tactic used by the 
general population, since it's both multiple 
windows *and* tabs.)
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Jim Drew		   Seattle, WA		   cfmdesigns at earthlink.net
    http://home.earthlink.net/~rubberize/Weblog/index.html (Update: 5/2)
		(Subject: Movie Commentary: I, Robot)