Hi! Fidelity versus Touch

Interesting fact: 42% of RBIRD.com visitors in the last 30 days have screen resolutions higher than 1280×1024. Only 9% survive with resolutions of 1024×768 or lower.

Another perspective: More than 58% of all visitors to RBIRD.com in the last 30 days have screen resolutions of 1280×1024 or higher.

It seems to me that these numbers provide a green light to design for 1280.

Peripheral fact: While our web audience is ready to receive and our server is able to deliver 1280 pixels, our “SOA” LCD projector used in new business pitches is maxed out at 1024 native resolution.

In other words: The virtual experience metrics are beginning to eclipse reality metrics.

Virtual versus Real - In this case, Virtual is winning.

Allow me to translate: Those who visit R.BIRD in their browsers are more likely to have a richer experience and better view than those who meet with us in person. This is a frightening revelation.

This trend also speaks directly to the majority of our clients who still do not believe that their website presence is anything more than a nuisance they’d rather not have to think about. It’s all too often something thrown in with the last tenths-of-one-percent of advertising budgets. (Meanwhile, we are the first results when a client customer searches… a topic for another day.)

Back on track: Now, the numbers are bearing things out:
* Average television experience, visibility, resolution is 640 pixels (NTSC)
* HDTV is moving that up to 1080 pixels, while
* Web browsers are moving to 1280 pixels and beyond - 4 (*FOUR*) times the resolution of NTSC television.

There are 6 comments so far | Post a comment

Justin French | Jun 3, 2006

“42% of RBIRD.com visitors in the last 30 days have screen resolutions higher than 1280×1024.” — is that screen resolution, or browser width? I have a display running at 1920 wide, but I’d rarely run Safari or Firefox any wider than half that.

Richard Bird | Jun 4, 2006

The statistics I’m referring to come directly from log reports by Urchin, HitBox and Mint. The numbers reported are screen resolution, not browser window sizes.

Mike | Jun 5, 2006

Those who visit R.BIRD in their browsers are more likely to have a richer experience and better view than those who meet with us in person.

Point taken, but wouldn’t you agre that there is only a loose relationship at best between screen size and quality of experience?

Richard Bird | Jun 5, 2006

Right, Mike, people do matter in the experience equation. So, my thoughts are really pointed toward the visual elements of an encounter.

Mike | Jun 5, 2006

Understood. But I don’t believe that a larger canvas makes for a more compelling site (or presentation). It’s just a larger canvas.

Dan H | Jun 6, 2006

I see what you’re saying, and for me, every presentation room in my office has poor lighting & a bad projector. So, vivid colors are washed out and text is fuzzy.

What Justin up there got me thinking about is that browser-size is what ultimately matters now: I have a 23�? wide screen display at home and Safari is never filling the whole thing up. At the office, I have two 19�? displays running >1024… but FireFox is rarely maximized even there.

When real people are working on several things and using websites, they’re never looking at the full screen “presentation-mode�? view of the website. They’re looking at things on the web and will switch quickly to their calendar & email to do more work with the info they’ve discovered on the web, it’s handy to have a cascade of FireFox, Outlook, etc. across the screen.

What this boils down to, though, is that resolutions are no longer an important factor when you are designing your pages, because we have so much more screen space. Just don’t plan on using all 1920×1200 of my pixels if you want me to use your website.

Random afterthought: are R.Bird visitors’ a similar cut from all possible audiences of your customers, display-resolution-wise?