Forums | MacLife

Ya know,
I still do 640 x 480. Everytime I have to use a pc (as little as possible), even on 17 inch monitors with a higher res, even my 640 x480 designs look crowded. 7 out of 10 pc's I see(chill out trolls the I is italicised) are set up with every damn toolbar etc possible, taking up ridiculous amounts of screen real estate. 
This is a decidedly un-scientific sampling.

Last year I compiled the screen sizes on of all visitors at a portal I ran.  It was a huge site with massive traffic.  And the users were pretty "average" users.  In a month sampling I found that 90% were 1024x768 or higher, >1% 640x480 and about 5% were between those. (the rest were bots or undetermined)

I had posted the detailed numbers on the old MAF board.

I just try to determine what my audience will be using.  If it is an older crowd or doctors, I keep it at 800x600 max.  The rest I will try to make it fluid that will colapse to 800x600  with out side scrolling.  For the next version of AAF it will be min of 1024x768, but in that case I know my visitors. 

I also bear in mind that even though people have larger screens and reses, that doesn't mean they want a web page to take up the whole screen.  My comps are all set at 1600x1200, but I keep my surf windows small, because I use that res to have plenty of room.  Big sites are annoying.