What is the most common computer screen resolution?

[mikecheck1two]

I designed a background image for our churches twitter page that has our service times, location and contact info. http://twitter.com/cornerstonelp/

The background looks good on my screens resolution of 1280x768. Although at a resolution of 1024x768 you can't see the info fully. What screen resolution do you guys have your screens set to and what screen resolution do you think the majority uses. I would hate to modify my background. I think it looks good at the resolution I set it at.

Any thoughts?

[Arlin]

Here is a similar post, but it is asking the question from a projection point of view:
What projector resolution do majority of churches use?

Overall, I think 1024x768 is probably the most common screen resolution for computers today and the best resolution to optimize a website for...
BUT, you need to take your audience demographics into consideration. In some cases, people may be using older computers and smaller monitors, or older people may set the resolution fairly small (800x600) so that the text is bigger and easier to read...

The safest thing to do is design your website for a 800x600 screen size, but that can become rather limiting.

[waynehoskins]

Yeah, 1024x768 seems to be the new baseline. Mine here at the office is running 1280x1024, but I also run several that are only 1024x768. However, even me who runs some old hardware at times, I don't have anything that's smaller than 1024.

[greg4god]

Two points to consider:

1. projection settings and regular computer settings will probably be different. I think most people set the projectors resolution to what it handles the best, and probably have the primary computer monitor higher than that (make room for all them side bars and such).

2. What the resolution of the display are and the dimensions of the browser window can also be two different things. As many system get wider displays, more people browse with their browser not maximized. I am constantly amazed at how many people I know even at lower resolutions always open a browser window not maximized, and then have to scroll all over.

That being said, Probably best to design for width of 1024.

-Greg

[randyvogl]

I have a real battle with this as well, it really depends on what the site is for! If it is for a 4,000 person congregation than 800 x 600 would be your safest. However if your target market is highschool youth 1024x786 might even be too small. If you are really wondering, what I would do is setup google analytics (free) on your website and watch your traffic for a few months. Then make the determination for example with our high school groups website the resolution breakdown is as follows:

1280x800	30.88%
1024x768	22.06%
1440x900	15.69%
1143x857	5.39%
1680x1050	4.41%
1280x1024	3.92%
1366x768	3.43%
320x396	2.45%
1152x864	1.96%
1080x810	1.47%

So because of this breakdown I have far more creative freedom. Because of google analytics I also know that 90% had flash 9.0 or newer. This gives me the real tools that I need to make web design decisions, and quantify them to management.