Flash best practice: stage dimension 1000×570
Monday 13 August 2007 - Filed under Tips
Before starting on the design a Flash website, first thing first, the dimension of the file must be decided. Even full browser flash (FBF) sites can’t run away from this. I’ve seen sites that have overlapping text due to wrong dimensions, such as this new FWA site.
Based on w3cschool’s statistics, the most popular screen resolution is still 1024×768 (54%) and quite a portion are using higher resolutions or wide screens (26%). So, most of the sites should target for 1024×768 users unless it is confirmed that the majority of the visitors use something else based on web analytics.
The next step is to decide the dimension of the Flash file that can sit in a 1024×768 screen beautifully. You can’t use 1024×768 as the Flash file dimension, because the browser takes up quite significant amount of space. At the top of a browser there are title, menu, address, bookmark and very likely some google/yahoo toolbar. At the bottom of a browser there’s also a status bar. There are some thin borders on both sides, too. For popup windows, the browser definitely has a title bar and for IE7 the address bar is compulsory and for Firefox the status bar can’t be taken out.
After a few rounds of trial and error, I find 1000×570 is the most promising dimension for non-popup Flash sites. It is the maximum width and height that can nicely fit into both IE(with 1 toolbar) and Firefox. For popup sites, the recommended dimension is 1000×700.
I believe Flash designers and developers do not use a low resolution like 1024×768. It’s a good practice that always test the site in 1024×678 screen resolution to make sure everything is visible to the user and the design looks good.
2007-08-13 » 5566
14 August 2007 @ 2:43 am
My favorite is: 971×608
Proof
14 August 2007 @ 4:29 am
If you guys check dreamweaver where it says screen resolution you’ll find there 955×600 which acording to adobe is the 1024×768 ( safemargin for all browsers )
14 August 2007 @ 5:06 am
To Hugo,
Dreamweaver came out with that recommendation years ago. Things have changed. Most people have toolbars now, Google or Yahoo!. Although there’s no reliable source of how many percents of browsers have toolbars, but based on the amount of software delivers toolbars as a bundle I think the number should be quite high.
15 August 2007 @ 11:18 am
I like to use the 955 width, because I have found that a number of people, especially IE users will have some side bar open, like the favorites, will browsing.
2 December 2008 @ 8:22 am
thankyou, this was useful and interesting
25 May 2010 @ 10:46 pm
nice one, thank you!