[Pythoncard-users] Straw Poll - Screen Size (Possibly OT)

[Phil E. <ph...@li...>]

Whenever I've released software into the big bad world, I've (up to now) made 
a conscious effort to ensure that all main windows and dialogs require a 
screen resolution of no more than 800x600. Looking around the office where 
I'm sitting at the moment, it seems that nobody uses a screen resolution this 
small any more. For instance, the laptop I'm typing this on has a 1920x1200 
widescreen display, I have a 1600x1200 CRT sitting next to me, the guy to my 
left runs a pair of 15-inch TFTs at 1024x768 each, the dev team have 19-inch 
TFTs running at resolutions up to 1600x1200.

I wonder if the list feels there is a minimum reasonable screen resolution to 
expect most people to be running at? Or is it better from a pure usability 
point of view to keep individual windows as simple as possible even if that 
means having to employ multi-page dialogs?

Even a single step up from 800x600 to 1024x768 gives a 60% increase in 
available display area based purely on the total pixel count. I'm conscious 
of the temptation to try and fit ever more buttons, text boxes and other 
components onto a bigger screen, but at the same time I know from past 
experience that many end-users of software I've written are happier to have 
less clutter per window, even if that means having to click their way through 
more than one window to accomplish a particular task.

Just a bit of random Monday afternoon musing, I'm interested to know if people 
have any strong opinions one way or another.

-- 

Regards

Phil Edwards
Brighton, UK