Watch out developers! User screen resolutions just got bigger!
Attention all web developers! There appears to be enough recent data collected by analytics firms to suggest that for the first time1366 x 768 has become the most popular screen resolution worldwide, having overtaken 1024 x 768.
StatCounter, a leading web analytics company, reports that since 2009, 1024×768 has been the dominant screen size globally on the web, except for mobile. 1024×768 has fallen from 41.8% in March 2009 to 18.6% in March 2012. Over the same period 1366×768 has grown from 0.68% to 19.28%. The third most popular size is 1280×800 at 13%.
The information was collected from over 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US) to the StatCounter network of more than three million websites. So this is a pretty solid forecast and affects all web designers or developers coding sites on cheap, affordable hosting platforms.
W3Schools.com also said most users are employing screen resolutions larger than 1024 x 768. In fact as of January 2012, it reported that at least 85% of users are using a higher resolution.
Source: W3Schools.com
But while screens have been getting bigger, that does not mean they have been getting better, especially in terms of pixel density.
“This may change once Apple brings its Retina displays to its MacBook line, but right now, it’s almost as hard to find a small display with a very high resolution in a mainstream machine as it is to find a screen that isn’t widescreen,” said TechCrunch.
It’s also interesting to note TechCrunch’s observation that Microsoft’s Windows 8 was aimed (almost) exclusively at 1366 x 768 resolution screens.
Only 1.2% of active Windows 7 users currently have screens with resolutions of less than 1024×768 and just fewer than 5% still use 1024×768 screens.