Real-World Browser Size Stats, Part II

In Part I of this article I showed you how to write your own script(s) to track the screen resolution, browser viewable size, and bit-depth, of your users. While you are gathering your own statistics, I’ll offer mine up for review.

The site for which I gathered these statistics is http://algonquinstudios.com/. It is the web site for my company, Algonquin Studios. It is not a portal site, or really any other kind of traditional destination on the web. It is a site that offers corporate information. Much of the site traffic comes from searches on Yahoo! and Snap for web development, enterprise application development, and various other software and web-related topics. A good deal of traffic comes from client sites, including a popular local not-for-profit. The rest of the traffic have no referrers and most likely are existing clients, leads, or people who just check on us every now and then (competitors, partners, friends, etc.).

I started with 1,000 records, and discarded 14 that had no data. There are some records that have questionable data, but only those with a bit-depth of ‘0’. So that left 986 good records on which I based these results. What I’ve done is break the data down per resolution tier. But first I will cover the aggregate data.

The window width and height represent the viewable space within the window, not the actual window size. Instead of guessing who had what tool bars open, it seemed easier to just capture the actual usable real estate. Please keep that in mind as you view these numbers.

I’ve also created this handy chart to show you the actual numbers and percentage breakdowns of each resolution that visited the site. The x-axis represents the screen resolution, and the y-axis represents the number (of 986) and percent of users at that resolution.

All Users

	Screen Width	Screen Height	Bit-Depth	Window Inner Width	Window Inner Height
Mean	941	705	21	806	485
Median	1,024	768	16	783	446
Mode	1,024	768	16	780	602

Highest	2,560	1,024	32	1,372	1,014
Lowest	640	480	0	80	51

640 x 480 (56 users, 5.7%)

	Window Inner Width	Window Inner Height	Bit-Depth
Mean	600	304	17
Median	620	314	16
Mode	620	314	16

Highest	636	420	32
Lowest	416	156	1

800 x 600 (393 users, 39.9%)

	Window Inner Width	Window Inner Height	Bit-Depth
Mean	719	397	20
Median	779	420	16
Mode	780	434	16

Highest	843	524	32
Lowest	80	96	8

832 x 624 (11 users, 1.1%)

	Window Inner Width	Window Inner Height	Bit-Depth
Mean	756	442	21
Median	761	455	16
Mode	764	422	16

Highest	811	487	32
Lowest	669	365	8

1,024 x 768 (402 users, 40.8%)

	Window Inner Width	Window Inner Height	Bit-Depth
Mean	881	539	22
Median	918	579	16
Mode	1,004	602	16

Highest	1,028	768	32
Lowest	80	51	8

1,152 x 870 (62 users, 6.3%)

	Window Inner Width	Window Inner Height	Bit-Depth
Mean	925	630	25
Median	889	667	32
Mode	836	696	32

Highest	1,148	731	32
Lowest	659	364	0

1,280 x 1,024 (41 users, 4.2%)

	Window Inner Width	Window Inner Height	Bit-Depth
Mean	963	710	22
Median	932	755	24
Mode	1,260	597	32

Highest	1,276	886	32
Lowest	708	347	0

1,600 x 1,200 (18 users, 1.8%)

	Window Inner Width	Window Inner Height	Bit-Depth
Mean	960	755	25
Median	883	758	28
Mode	883	771	32

Highest	1,372	1,014	32
Lowest	751	480	16

Other Users

There are also a few records that had unique settings. They are as follows:

One user with monitor resolution of 767 x 553 x 32-bit. Viewable browser area was 763 x 442.
One user with monitor resolution of 960 x 720 x 16-bit. Viewable browser area was 940 x 578.
One user with monitor resolution of 2,560 x 1,024 x 16-bit. Viewable browser area was 628 x 623.

Finally

Some of you who are better number crunchers than I may be interested in looking at the log. Some of you may want to verify what I’ve found. You can get your own copy of the log, with IP addresses removed.

You will note some odd numbers above every now and then. Some browsers reported ‘0’ as the bit depth. This is most likely incorrect, but I have left the data in there instead of dumping the whole record. A bit-depth of ‘1’, however, is quite possible. You will also note that while bit-depths can come as 1, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32, some charts show a mean bit-depth of 17, or some other number. This is an average. I leave it up to the user to determine whether or not he/she would round it up or down. In these cases, the median or mode would be more useful.

Some related articles

Real-World Browser Size Stats, Part I
640 x 480 Isn’t Dead Just Yet
Let the User Skip the Splash Page
Sizing Up the Browsers (Webmonkey)
Differences Between Print Design and Web Design (Alertbox)