My Merchant Account Blog

Going Back to the Dark Ages

Saturday, March 12, 2011

A few years ago, I remember talking with others about designing a website in a static layout, focusing on a 1280X800 resolution. Some webmasters would do a fluid layout, giving up on some layout properties. Throughout all these years, the first number (1280) is the width and the second number (800) was the height. This was really never an issue for webmasters - the layout was always in a landscape mode.

Now with smartphones and iPads, things have changed. Landscape has become portrait. It almost like webmasters are starting over. A lot of companies and webmasters are offering a mobile version for their users. Maybe a year ago, this might mean less images or even none - since mobile carriers would charge the user for data usage. Now, most carriers are offering a flat rate for data usage and the networks are getting faster.

iPad Resolution

If a user is holding the iPad like a book, it is in portrait mode. This means, the resolution is 768X1024. A little over one year ago, about 1% of users were still using a screen resolution of 800X600. Now, less than 1% is using this resolution, since monitors are getting cheaper and can also function as a television.

When the user turns the iPad, it is now in landscape mode and the resolution is 1024X768. In January 2010, about 20% of web users had this resolution. This decreased about 6% in January 2011, but it will probably increase as iPad users upgrade and sell their "old" iPads.

Mobile Versions

Some webmasters will add code to their website to help determine if a user is viewing the website on a mobile phone. This might work, but keep in mind that Microsoft threw a cog in this function in Windows Mobile 7 phones. A user can change the settings on Internet Explorer to use a Mobile or Desktop Version.

While there are good reasons to use a static or fluid layout, webmasters are usually controlled by the client who wants it a certain way. Personally, we just try to offer the choice between a mobile and full version on our websites.

Mobile Virtual Terminal

In keeping with the theme of this blog, we would like to remind our readers that the Quantum Gateway offers a virtual terminal for the mobile phone (or smartphone).