How important is it to make your website layout fit on low-res displays?

Question

How important is it to make a website layout fit on 640 x 480 and 800 x 600 displays? For some time I have been designing with the assumption of at least 1024 x 768, but I haven't been doing it professionally (just on my site which is just a blog that only 10-15 friends read). Does anyone have any non-anecdotal statistics about the distribution of screen resolutions from real web users?

Note 1: "Non-anecdotal" means please don't give answers like "I know lots of people using 640x480" or "my mom runs in 800x600 so it must be really common." I'd rather have actual data (or links to actual data), especially if it is data about general users (rather than geeks).

Note 2: I'm not concerned with extremely-small displays like those on PDAs and cell phones (at least not at the moment). I'm just talking about desktop/laptop monitors.

Answer 1

I think the general assumption these days is that 1024x768 is acceptable, thats certainly the route I take. A good benchmark is to look at big sites like the BBC, they recently switched to a 1024x768 design. Thats not to say every site has to be that, for smaller sites I often stick to 800x600 just so the content doesn't look pathetic :o)

Here is the source I often use for web statistics with its august 2008 stats showing 800x600 at 7%.

Answer 2

W3Schools tracks a variety of browser statistics, including display resolution. You can find the display resolution here: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

Of course, you should use statistics as close to your target audience as possible. These statistics are drawn from the browsers of people who browse W3School's site (primarily developers). Other target audiences are likely to have a different profile.