Optimum published screen size?
May 20, 2008 12:00 AM
Well, in the new article in the e-Learning Guild's Learning Solutions e-magazine, Do I Have Your Attention? Design Practices Help Learners Engage, the author (Kevin Wilcoxon) says: Text-based instruction may well be best if you present it in smaller windows (640 x 400), wheras use of illustration and animations calls for larger windows (800 x 600). Standard screen size (1024 x 768) or larger, on the other hand, is a big area for maintaining attention, and can overwhelm its contents. Users will unconsciously separate the screen into sectors that they must process successively.In addition, I tend to prefer a smaller than 1024 x 768 screen size because I don't want to run the risk of the user ending up having to scroll vertically, or, even worse, horizontally, due to other screen elements beyond my control (like browser menus and toolsbars), while not wanting to necessarily deprive them of all of those elements. Just my $.02!
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