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Real-World Browser Size Stats, Part II

Originally published: July 04, 2000
Adrian Roselli

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.

Screen Resolution Stats

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.

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