Jay Gilmore wrote Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:45:02 -0400: > Felix Miata wrote : > > In fact, most must have done > >at least some personalization, since most hit statistics that say the most > >common screen resolution is 1024x768 even though old versions of doze > >default to 640x480 and newer to 800x600, and signicant numbers are above > >the median.
> It might appear that way but for many home and small biz users they are > getting systems from major PC co's and these systems come with > preconfigured OS's with a default resolution higher than 800X600 usually > if the bottom system is shipping with a 17" monitor Dell, Gateway, HP > and Compaq ship with resolutions optimized for the 17" monitor. In > addition more and more LCD's are being installed everywhere. The native > resolutions for 17" LCD is usually 1024X768 or greater and it either > changes the Windows display settings on install or suggests that in > order to make it work the setting be changed. If vendors are pre-configuring to 1024x768 that amounts to personalization by proxy, setting something better than 12pt/16px @ 800x600 (fonts not "too big"), which is much more likely than not to be close enough to what a user might have done herself to not require further personalization in most cases. I find most people I've sit down with at 17" or 19" nominal CRTs like equally 16px @ 1024x768, 18px @ 1152x864, 20px at 1280x960 or 1280x1024, 22px @ 1400x1050, and 24px or 26px @ 1600x1200. Naturally this will depend on actual display size, visual acuity, and viewing distance, but it usually gets close enough that no further adjustment is required or even desired. Note on http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/pixelsize.html that 16px @ 1024x768 on a 17" CRT is pretty close to newsprint territory in type size to reading distance ratio. That means going below 16px on a system with such settings is much like trying to read a newspaper from a longer than normal reading distance, with the added handicap that screen fonts are of inferior quality compared to print fonts. And of course it's worse for those using smaller CRT or laptop displays. Note also that in most cases, depending on driver, and in the case of a flat panel the actual physical aspect ratio, those 1280x1024 resolution systems are making everything shorter than the supposed size. I just checked http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/aspect.html on Fedora Core 4 on a Sony 17" CRT, and the squares are all about 94% as tall as they are wide. -- Jesus Christ is the reason for the season. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
