The types of computers and connection speeds of our users vary widely. We recommend designing pages that will download in 10 seconds or less over a 56K modem. This translates roughly to a page size of 70K. For example, the university's Home page is about 70K in total size. Remember that while a growing number of people have broadband connections, there are still a high percentage of people using dial up modems.
Web Central and UT Direct were designed for screen resolutions of 800x600 or higher. Recent statistics indicate that more than 99 percent of people visiting Web Central are using a resolution of 800x600 or higher. We strongly discourage creating designs that require horizontal scrolling on resolutions of 800x600.
Web Central Screen Resolution statistics from November 2006
It is important to note that on a resolution of 800x600 the viewable area for a typical Web page is as low as 720 pixels and perhaps as high as 760 pixels. If you create pages or graphics that are 800 pixels wide, users will have to scroll horizontally (bad!) to view the entire page. Make sure you test your site at different screen resolutions as well as different browsers and different platforms.
