E
Ed Seedhouse
I am aware of the browsers/OS etc statistics and of opinion that in desire
to match all possible user setups and habits, one has to decide where to
draw the line.
One can draw the line quite broadly if one designs with foresite and
understanding of the medium. Web pages are, by nature, flexible. That's
just the way it is. That being so you can either deny it and pretend it
isn't so, or understand it and learn how to work with it, not against
it.
The Web is Not Paper! Anyone who designs as if it is is doing what
radio producers did in the 1950s when they moved over to TV. They
assumed that what worked on radio would work on TV. As anyone who has
watched any 1950's TV shows lately knows, they were wrong, and their
work suffered accordingly.
Anyone who doesn't understand the differences between the web and paper
is in the position of someone in the 1960s trying to produce a TV show
based on his knowledge of radio.
The web provides suitable tools for designing pages that work with the
media, and anyone who doesn't learn them is just plain living in the
past. Such questions as "what resolution should I design to?" are just
evidence that the questioner has no understanding of the medium.
Don't design for *any* resolution, design for them *all*. Tools are
available to make a web page work on all of them, and those who don't
learn them and use them are rapidly going to be obsolete.